Much like the last presidential election, I put on blinders and tried not to let all of the “distractions” get in my way. That might have been the wrong way to handle it, because all of those distractions became… the Russian interference in the election, and that led to the downfall of the American republic. Throughout the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton was right about almost everything. Go back and watch some of her interviews and debate answers from the fall of 2016 – she clearly saw the Russian interference on Trump’s behalf, and she called it out bluntly, over and over again. Well, we’re almost one year away from the 2020 presidential election. And Hillary is still calling sh-t like she sees it. This time, she f–king knows that *someone* is an asset for Russia and Syria.
Former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said Thursday the Russians are currently “grooming” a Democrat running in the presidential primary to run as a third-party candidate and champion their interests. The comment appears to be directed at Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who has been accused of being cozy with Russia in the past.
“I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” Clinton said, speaking on a podcast with former Obama adviser David Plouffe. “She’s the favorite of the Russians.”
Clinton never names Gabbard, but there are only five women running for President — Gabbard, California Sen. Kamala Harris, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and author Marianne Williamson — and none of the other woman have been accused of being boosted by Russia. Clinton did not provide proof about how Russia is “grooming” Gabbard. She and her team pointed to allegations that Russian news and propaganda sites often report on Gabbard’s campaign and that moments in Gabbard’s campaign have been reportedly amplified by trolls and bots on Twitter with ties to Russia. Gabbard has denied those allegations.
“They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far,” Clinton said. Clinton’s team also noted that some of Gabbard’s foreign policy views align closely with Russian interests.
Gabbard responded on Twitter Friday afternoon to Clinton’s comments. “Thank you @HillaryClinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose. It’s now clear that this primary is between you and me. Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly.”
I would also like to thank Hillary Clinton. She has the profile to bring attention to this issue, and even though all of the shadowy Russian assets and bots are amplifying the attacks on Hillary (party like it’s 2016), all that does is prove Hillary’s point AND give us an opportunity to say all of this sh-t out loud. The interests of Tulsi Gabbard and Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are largely aligned. And I imagine Tulsi’s tweet sounded better in the original Russian. Also: in my opinion, the bots are also amplifying Bernie Sanders quite heavily online. It’s become a problem for journalists to cover because the Bernie bots swarm on anyone offering mild criticism of Sanders or his campaign.
Update from @merica: when asked if the former secretary of state was referring to Gabbard, Clinton spox Nick Merrill said, “If the nesting doll fits.”
“This is not some outlandish claim,” Merrill added. “This is reality.”
— Rebecca Buck (@RebeccaBuck) October 18, 2019
Trump last night defended Jill Stein and Tulsi Gabbard against charges of Russian influence. He wasn't supposed to do that, he was supposed to pretend they were not all on the same team. https://t.co/8wczbtseFd
— David Frum (@davidfrum) October 20, 2019
Gabbard also repeatedly refused to disavow Russian Embassy tweets defending her: https://t.co/WitERpxmam
— Alexandra Jaffe (@ajjaffe) October 19, 2019
Photos courtesy of Backgrid and Getty.
We are in hell…a hell of our own making…
And YET…
Watching the political moves that Hillary and Nancy have done over the last several years…
Has been an ABSOLUTE joy
This just made my day. I had to read the headline twice and just shake my head. I couldn’t make this up if I tried.
You’re right!!!
A hit dog will always holler. Everyone knew who Secretary Clinton was talking about. And also, all of those people who are using Tulsi’s being a vet as some kind of inoculation against being a Russian asset can miss me with that. She’s odd. She’s an Assad apologist. Her programming shows when all she can say is “regime change wars.”
Pompeo was also a graduate at West Point but that doesn’t mean he’s a patriot. He sold us out for Russian rubbles.
Tulsi should sit down. HI why did you elect this nut to represent you?
Someone in the replies called her a “peace loving vet.” Not that a person can’t be that but, it was a strange Juxtaposition of words.
why would a lady who reminds everyone she is a vet at every opportunity (to the point of illegally using her uniform to make campaign images) call someone else a war monger? why go into the military if you don’t have the reasonable expectation that you might have to…engage in warfare? i don’t understand that.
also HRC is 100% right. she was in 2016. she is now. tulsi outed herself as putin’s puppet and if she’s not actively involved in courting their help – she is too stupid to be president if she thinks all these twitter bots are real people supporting her.
Being a war monger has nothing to do with an expectation that you might eventually have to go fight. Instead of politics by other means, a war monger uses the military and active threats of force as a primary political tool.
i mean – fundamentally i understand that but you don’t get to engage in jingoism when it suits your campaign, support military dictators and then accuse others of being warmongers. it is silly.
I assume that most people who enlist aren’t … pumped to go to war? You know what I mean? I think there’s a difference between fighting for or defending those who need it, and looking to start wars. It still is sort of weird of her to say, though.
That said, there’s been a few things over the last few months that have made me wonder about Tulsi.
The thing that drives me crazy is that people don’t seem to get that someone could be an unwitting asset. It’s not like Trump or Tulsi or Stein (I’m assuming) filled out applications and signed up to be Russian agents. As Hillary said, they decide who they’re going to amplify and who they’re going to destroy and it works because so many fu^cking idiots can’t discern propaganda when they see it.
It’s crazy that Russia had such tight control of the narrative in the 2016 election. And it makes sense that Trump would win considering his and his family’s ignorance and sheer willingness to be manipulated.
IDK if it’s all that unwittingly in Trump or Stein’s cases.
Yeah, you’re right, especially with Trump and his sketchy financial ties. Although I do tend to think he wasn’t actively involved in Russian election interference as much as he just went with it once he saw he was benefitting from it (even as he would deny that he was).
…and money. Funneling money has to be part of this.
She might not have filled out an application, but she met with Assad in 2017. Her talking points are too closely aligned with Russia for it to be coincidence. Gabbard knowingly pushes the Putin/Assad narrative. So does Trump. There are too many Russian financial connections for Trump to be an unknowing asset.
Don’t forget Dump money laundering for the oligarchs through the now failed casinos. And Dump’s crotch-spawn Qusay, or was it idiot brother Uday, claimed that “they didn’t need American bank loans; most of their loans/financing was from Russia”
Yes, Orange Menace did way back when they were laundering money through his failing properties in NYC in the 90s. Read House of Trump, House of Putin.
Hillary is a modern day Cassandra.
Everything she says is spot on.
“even though all of the shadowy Russian assets and bots are amplifying the attacks on Hillary (party like it’s 2016), all that does is prove Hillary’s point AND give us an opportunity to say all of this sh-t out loud.”
Exactly, Kaiser. They are still on Hillary because she is calling them out.
Same on the Dem candidates who criticized Hillary for saying this.
Yeah, I’m glad she’s outing those sympathetic to the Russian cause. Buttigieg have a pretty weak answer too (and then to find out that he’s hired people recommended to him by Mark Zuckerberg? NO THANK YOU).
Hillary warned us about Russian puppet Trump before the election. She warned Americans that his loyalties will never be with this country. She was right then and she’s right now.
The best thing is that she is giving these fools enough rope to not only hang themselves, but also their defenders.
Something I’ve noticed on other sites that Trump supporters comment on, is that Gabbard is the only “Democrat” they’d want to vote for and the only politician on the “left” they think is qualified to run for president. However, I don’t argue with them. Regardless of the proof you wave in front of them, they will hunker down on their “truth”. Sigh. So many of them still believe the Mueller report exonerated Trump.
Tulsi was one of the people who made similar claims. She gave multiple interviews, some on Fox, stating the Mueller report showed no collusion with Russia. She never brings up the proven election interference or the obstruction charges. She is terrible.
And it’s so frustrating since the report’s introduction literally opens by stating Russia interfered in our elections.
Isn’t there something intuitively creepy @TG? It’s like a fairy tale foe come to life- pretty and evil at once. A person can’t hide in bright light.
During the last Dem debate, she looked directly into the camera and said “I am a Russian asset.” Then she repeated it. It was her way of saying that people were being mean to her, but the way she did it, my god.
And she is a Russian asset.
I find it telling (as this post states in the headline) that no name was mentioned, yet one lesser known candidate claims it. And does not seem to deny it. Why not state outright that it is completely untrue?
Methinks TG probably was planning to go third party and her feathers are ruffled because HRC called “someone” out for it.
I’ve been watching every candidate’s response to what Hillary said. Beto disqualified himself and he was in my top 3. Cory, same. Warren is in hiding on this, as per usual.
Harris and Castro did great.
So, that’s my ticket.
Cory Booker tweeted a reaction to Tulsi Gabbard’s tweet attacking Hillary. And it was epic.
What was his reaction?
@Rapunzel, Booker tweeted a gif of himself from one of the debates, shaking his head with a facial reaction of total disbelief and surprise. People were applauding him for the burn.
I know, and it’s too bad he didn’t leave it at that. Unforuntely he went on tv later and showed his a*s
What did Booker do?
As a non American I don’t understand why it was so bad for other candidates to defend her? Not trying to say one way or the other whether she is or she isn’t just trying to understand why a candidate defending her is so problematic.
Russia, as we now know, funneled money to GOP candidates through the NRA in 2016. Former NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch, who is pure evil, has been heavily pushing and promoting Tulsi Gabbard on her radio show and Twitter account. That’s all I need to believe Tulsi is Russian-backed.
I also have suspicions about Andrew Yang because Ben Shapiro keeps pushing him.
Yang may be the 3rd party run, HRC is right that there’s going to be one. She said she’s not sure who it will be, she did not say it would be Tulsi.
It always amuses me when there’s a tv show on the McCarthy era and everyone says, oh, that would never happen today, we are so enlightened. And then this woman accuses two other women of being Russian assets, without offering any proof, and everyone is, you go Queen!
One of the differences with McCarthyism is that one could and can be a self identified communist, or socialist, or labor union member, or Jewish, without being disloyal to the US. One can not use Russian troll farms or Russian intel on opponents to boost a campaign without being disloyal to the US. So it’s not really like McCarthy at all.
Aang, thank you for clarifying and I hope you’ll be able to make this point Every Single Time it comes up – because you know it’s going to.
Also, no one says we’re too enlightened for McCarthyism – government persecution of citizens over their political beliefs – to happen again.
It happened after McCarthy was discredited, but at a quieter level.
No one says we’re too enlightened for genocide to happen again, either. And Tulsi Gabbard met with and endorsed a genocidal dictator, Assad of Syria.
The history books also tend to leave out the fact that a startling number of the people tried under McCarthy were actually guilty or later found to be foreign assets. The violence perpetrated against people supporting political dissent in legitimate ways was the darker result, as was stoking paranoia to drive capitalist imperialism, but McCarthy is not quite as cut and dry as people think it is, unfortunately.
anyone who (pretends) doesn’t AT LEAST know by now that Stein is a Putin asset is either a right wing provocateur or a Russian one.
It’s not a random accusation or made up out of thin air.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/guess-who-came-dinner-flynn-putin-n742696
CANCELED!! Don’t need another Comrade in the White House.
Tulsi is an obstructionist twit. Team Hillary/Team anti-Putin apologist traitors. Tulsi’s hissy fit of a response just makes the case more that she isn’t fit for office. Attacking Hillary and ignoring the accusations is a stupid thing to do but then again I find Tulsi quite stupid so… makes sense.
Tulsi Gabbard was one of only 3 representatives to not condemn Assad for gassing Syrian civilians, she has also frequently repeated Russian talking points and works to legitimise Assad.
She introduced legislation pushed by GOP-megadonor, Sheldon Adelson:
She was born into a cult called the Science of Identity. It was created in the 1970’s and is led by a white man named Chris Butler, but he calls himself Jagad Guru Siddhaswarupananda Paramahamsa. Her own aunt has come forward and called it the “alt-right of the Hare Krishna movement”. To this day Tulsi is an active member and some of her campaign staff come directly from that cult. In short, Tulsi Gabbard is neither a progressive or a Democrat and she has already threatened to take her campaign to the convention even when she loses.
I don’t think Americans can afford 3rd party votes in the next election as democracy hangs in the balance.
That’s why Russia would be hyping up Gabbard and Sanders. Draw votes away from the Democratic nominee with a third party candidate, and Drumpf wins. If people in certain states hadn’t voted third party, HRC would have gotten those state electoral votes as well as the popular vote.
Reasonable people (read: those on the left) can disagree on issues without resorting to calling each other russian assets or deep state plants. One of the things I actually like a lot about this democratic field is the entire political spectrum is represented. This is the best opportunity in a generation to have an honest discussion about any number of issues facing America and the world. I’m disappointed that Mrs. Clinton would step into the political fray just for a personal attack on a candidate polling at 1-3%. Its not as if Rep. Gabbard’s policy positions are shrouded in mystery. Attack those, instead of focusing on inconsequential social media activity. Let this primary be about ideas, save the mudslinging for the general.
Yep. And Clinton gave Tulsi HEAPS of press with that statement, which she badly needed. Clinton should have let Tulsi fade into obscurity like all the others polling at 1%.
Actually, I think Clinton’s move was a brilliant one, not so much because of Tulsi herself, who as you rightly say is polling to low to be a threat. I think it was more about pulling attention to the continuous and persistent efforts of Russia to covertly control America via its highly placed assets within America’s government.
People get to see it in real time, which in my view, further strengthens the case for Trump as a traitorous russian asset.
I think a person can only call this a “personal attack” if you think what Hillary is saying isn’t true. If she is correct, this is more than a personal attack, it is an attack on the United States by a hostile foreign government. I don’t blame Clinton for sounding the alarm on a democratic candidate for president being propped up by Putin. This isn’t petty, it is very serious.
Exactly. The act of calling it a “personal attack” minimizes the charge Clinton is making. Let’s not forget that Clinton is not running for president. She is not going after her competition or trying to discredit them. She is (again) sounding the alarm on something she sees happening, and good on her for doing it. Even after all the awful sh*t she went through the last election, she’s not sitting back or being quiet.
In a close election, 1-3% means a whole lot. I’m glad Clinton is calling out the Trump/Putin traitors. My state MI was taken by Trump by about 10k votes. It’s a winner take all state so every vote is critical. And if anyone thinks that the stakes are not higher this time around, they’re delusional.
I’m sick of “Democrats” like Gabbard—She couldn’t win as a Republican, that’s the only reason she calls herself a Dem.
Tulsi is a complete whack-a-doo. Totally bat-sh*t.
Is this the only way she could win in Hawaii? Pretend to be Democrat? Can’t stand her.
Yes, it was. Tulsi’s family were conservative, homophobic republicans. Then they realized republicans don’t get elected Hawaii and conveniently switched parties. Tulsi is whatever she thinks it take to win — whether that means switching parties, or doing the bare minimum to be able to call herself a “veteran” — it’s all about what will get her votes. God help the USA if she ever gets to a position of real power where her crazy alt-right, Assad-loving, policies can be put into effect.
I’m deadlining any candidate who can’t say with their chest that Russia interfered and continues to interfere in our elections.
This isn’t Red Scare Mccarthyism where we pick one position, birth, or religious affiliation and claim a Soviet connection.
All Tulsi had to do was condemn Hillary’s statement with a generic denial, something like, “That’s a terrible thing for her to accuse anyone of and btw, I know Russian bots seem to love me but I don’t know them”.
Instead, she did this. Because she IS being used by the Russians whether she knows it or not and because she’s simple. And for Yang not to acknowledge the threat of Russian interference is problematic as hell. He’s off my list.
Yes.
This! THANK YOU.
Yang has talked about Russian interference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ykfB6khIkI
I guess Jill Stein was busy?
Maybe people will hear what she’s saying.. she been spot on
If you mean Gabbard, no, she hasn’t been spot on.
She’s stood with Trump when he bans Syrian refugees from coming to the US.
She’s stood with Assad in calling anyone opposing him a “terrorist”.
She stood with Assad even after he used chemical weapons on civilians in his own country. She refuses to call out his war crimes and instead parrots the Assad and Putin talking points.
I would like to add my voice in praise of Hillary Clinton. I was listening to an Apple podcast yesterday of her talking about the coming election, Impeacement, Trump, GOP…
I was just smiling and agreeing with her. It suddenly struck me- HEY! Where are the men? Where is Bill Clinton? Obama? George W? Now Jimmy Carter is busy building homes, so he is clear of my anger. Where are those guys? Why are they not speaking out? Why are they not telling the truth? Why is it all dumped on Hillary?
Why are those guys acting so cowardly? Hillary was not even plugging her book yesterday!!
The fact the Tulsi is even still in this race as a Democratic candidate this far along with her appalling history of involvement in a actual cult (Science of Identity) and a long stance of being anti-gay is proof by itself there’s something fishy going on with her.
Both things, the anti-gay history especially, would be automatic disqualifiers for a typical Dem candidate. …Unless of course you’re being propped up by an incredibly powerful entity working in the shadows.
Something’s up with her for sure.
Good on Clinton for refusing to sit down and shut up. She doesn’t owe it to anybody to let Russia take another election. I find it interesting how even here, there are people claiming she’s not being “appropriate” or that she’s “attacking” Gabbard. Clinton isn’t running for president. Stop doing Russia’s job for them and blaming her for all the problems in American politics.
Dude you guys deserve Trump, I can’t believe the blind faith you guys have on Hillary & I know my comment is not going to make it, bc this site blocks people who don’t think like them. Tulsi is not my favorite candidate but the fact that she’s been smeared as a russian asset despite the fact she was part of the DNC & she stepped down bc she saw how corrupt it was. She wasn’t fired, she quit. And she’s been smeared since then, enjoy Trump second government, you fake progressives.
How convenient that there are only two options…another year year of Trump or supporting Gabbard!
Oh wait, there ARE more than those two options. It’s almost like you tried to do math and skipped about forty steps…or you’re trolling.
@Pamela, you’re still here. Yeah, You make a solid point on the DNC ugliness. There’s definitely bad blood between Wasserman Schultz and Gabbard. Gabbard privately accused Wasserman Schultz of violating the DNC’s duty of neutrality by favoring Clinton, which was made public with WikiLeaks. I’m not defending Gabbard, either, but I think it’s dangerous to buy into someone’s assertions when they don’t present any reasons as to how they came to that conclusion. Gabbard’s a fool for not condemning Assad, but that doesn’t mean she’s a willing asset of Russia.
If you are not condemning a murderous dictator, you are not a mere fool you are complicit. We don’t need anymore leaders in Putin’s pocket.