Tulsi Gabbard: War, Politics, and the Military Industrial Complex | Lex Fridman Podcast #423
- It's a sad state of affairs when some of the most influential
voices in our country will label someone a lover
or supporter of dictators, simply because you're saying, "Hey, we shouldn't be going to war. There is another way." (air swooshing) - The following is a
conversation with Tulsi Gabbard, who was a longtime Democrat, including being the vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. She endorsed Bernie in
2016 and Biden in 2020. She has been both loved
and heavily criticized for her independent thinking
and bold political stances, especially on topics of war and the military industrial complex. She served in the U.S.
military for many years, achieving the rank of Lieutenant Colonel, and now she's the author of a new book called "For Love of Country." This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends,
here's Tulsi Gabbard. You've served in the U.S.
military for many years, achieving rank of Lieutenant Colonel. You were deployed in Iraq in 2004 and five Kuwait in 2008 and '09. What lessons about life and about country have you learned from
that experience of war? - So many. Central to those lessons
learned was having my eyes open to the very real cost of war. You know, of course, I
served in a medical unit during that first deployment to Iraq. It was 2005 during the height of that war. And unfortunately, we
took a lot of casualties. We, across the entire U.S. military, my brigade that I deployed with was from the Hawaii National Guard. We had approximately 3,000
soldiers who were operating in four different areas of Iraq. And my first task every day was to go through a list of every injury, combat-related injury that had occurred the day before in the country. And I went through that
list, name by name, looking to see if any one of our nearly 3,000 soldiers from Hawaii had been hurt in the line of duty. And then if seeing them on the list, tracking them down, where were they? Were they getting the care they needed? Would they be able to get sufficient care to stay in country and return to duty? Did I need to get them evacuated? Usually it would be to military hospitals that at that time were in launch, Landstuhl and Ramstein in Germany. And then from there, getting them to either
Brooke Army Medical Center, which is here in Texas that specialized in burn-related injuries, or to Walter Reed, and tracking them and their care until they were finally
home with their families. And it never became a routine task. It never became like, "Okay, cool, check the list," you know, kind of dot the I's, cross the T's. It was that daily confrontation with the reality of the cost of war. Friends of mine were killed in combat. Experiencing firsthand
that high human cost of war caused me, you know, 20
something year old from Hawaii, I had left my seat in
the state legislature to volunteer to deploy with my brothers and sisters in my unit to Iraq. And so recognize the cost of war, I think in two fundamental ways. Number one is the high human
cost of war on our troops and on the people in the country where this war was being waged, and also the cost on American taxpayers. Seeing then, back, is again 2005, and recognizing KBR Halliburton, one of the biggest defense
contracting companies then and I know that they're still very much in that business now, Dick Cheney being
connected with that company at one point or another, but in our camp specifically, which was one of the larger
ones in Iraq at that time, there wasn't anything
that happened in our camp that didn't have the KBR
Halliburton logo imprinted on it. We had a big shack-looking
place where we ate our meals, they call it a dining facility,
a DFAC in the military. And they served four meals a day. They brought in, and they being KBR Halliburton, they imported workers in
from places like Nepal and Sri Lanka and the Philippines
to come in and cook food and work at this dining facility. I got curious about how much
it cost us as taxpayers. And so I started asking
around some of the people, and I think at that time it was like, Well, every time a soldier or a service member
walks through the door, if I were to go in for breakfast and grab a banana and walk out, that's an automatic $35 per head, per meal, four times a day, thousands and thousands of people. And then we made friends, you know. There's a pretty large
Filipino community in Hawaii, a lot of Filipino soldiers from Hawaii. We made friends with the
Filipino workers who were there. They would often go in
like the back of the tents and set up their own like rice cookers and cook their own meals, which is where the real good food was. But just started talking to them and getting to know them and ask like, "Hey, how much do you get paid?" And on average it was like, "Oh, I get paid like 500 bucks a month," 500 bucks a month to go
and do this work of either, you know, cleaning out
porta-potties, picking up trash, the dining facility, doing laundry, all of these different tasks because the military wanted
soldiers to be out doing things that only soldiers could do. Understandable. But I started putting, you know, two and two together and
knowing that this company, one company alone, was
making trillions of dollars, trillions of dollars, and yet this Filipino mom
is making 500 bucks a month, maybe getting one day off a week, maybe, working 12 hours a day otherwise. And I said, you know, "How often are you able
to go home to your family? Well, they'll let us go home a couple of weeks every other year." It was an eye-opening experience that growing up in Hawaii, I frankly hadn't given
much thought to before, but it's what led me, ultimately, coming back from that first deployment, there was no way that I could go back to the life that I had left behind. And I knew somehow, some way, I needed to find a way
to use those experiences to try to make a positive impact,
to try to influence those, I mean, frankly, the politicians who are
making decisions to go and launch these regime change wars and send our men and
women in uniform into war. And to what end, ultimately? - If we can just go back to that list. - [Tulsi] Yeah. - So the list is just name
and injury, name and injury. - Name, unit, potentially location, if someone had documented
that, and their injury. - And it's just pages and pages of that. - Yeah, yeah. And I knew, you know, I didn't
get to call home every day, but when I called home
and talked to my parents, I felt the tension in their voice. And, you know, they didn't want me to worry
about anything at home. And so they were always like, "Hey, how are you? What can we send you?" And this and that. But, you know, it wasn't like I was calling
them from down the street and saying, Hey, how's it going? Let's go have lunch or whatever. And so I knew that the
reason for that tension was they were terrified of
getting a phone call delivering the worst possible news. And that was what I thought
of as I went through that list of how, you know, it
is the reality of war. Behind every one of those names
on that list was, you know, a husband or a wife, parents,
you know, sons and daughters, family members who had no idea what we were dealing with, really. All they knew is what
they saw on the news. And what my dad told me
later when I got home after that deployment was that
every time they saw the news and they saw a helicopter shot down or crashed or some IED, they held their breath until they saw or heard the news of who
it was or what it was. - What can you say about
what the soldiers had to go through physically
and psychologically when they get injured? - The physical, you know, I mean, some injuries appeared
to be minor upfront. At that time, traumatic brain injury was not something that was talked about much, if at all. And so, you know, many had visible wounds. Others are now what we know were, appeared like, "All right, cool. He checked out," but had invisible wounds. Those who were injured in a way that did not allow them
to get back to work, found it emotionally very difficult to be put on a plane and
evacuated out of there, feeling guilty that they were
leaving their friends behind and not thinking about themselves or not feeling bad for themselves, but instead feeling bad for being forced to be in a position to leave. You know, for soldiers, it's not... Of course, we all have our own
political opinions on things, but when it comes right down to it, in a war zone, it's about your friends. It's about your brothers and sisters that you're serving alongside. It's not about the politicians or whatever insanity is
going on in Washington. It's about getting up and going out, getting the job done and
coming back home together. I mean, I had friends of
mine who were from Hawaii, who were from American Samoa, very culturally tight-knit community who confided in me throughout that, you know, year that we were there. Some of the very infantry soldiers who were going out on security patrols and doing raids every day, just some of the very
traumatic experiences that they went through. No physical injury, but creating a kind of
emotional stress and trauma that as human beings, they were
struggling in dealing with. On a positive note, you know, the Polynesian culture especially, but also Asian culture and
other cultures around the world, our guys found that,
shortly after we got there, the unit that we were replacing, you know, we're taking the guys
out on patrol and saying, "Hey, here's this village, here's where we found friendlies," or "here's where we know that there are insurgents operating" and they've got allies and lookouts and, you know, showing them
the lay of the land, basically. And what our guys found was that, as they were doing these ride-alongs, they call it a "left seat, right seat" when you're coming in and taking over, that there was a bit of a tense, even adversarial type of relationship where on the military side, there was an assumption of
suspicion or lack of trust just with the locally Iraqi people who lived around the base that we were at. And without anybody telling
them to, culturally, our guys began trying
to build relationships and, you know, for Hawaii and Samoa, and we had soldiers from Guam and Saipan, little things like, you're
riding down in a Humvee, you've got a gunner in the turret with a 50 cal or a
machine gun of some sort. Little things like pointing
the muzzle to the sky as you're riding through a town, rather than pointing it directly at where people are
walking down the street was a huge gesture of an assumption of, Hey, let's actually
talk and become friends. We had our guys riding down the street and throwing shakas out
to the local people there, breaking bread, sharing tea, and building those relationships. And again, I served in a medical unit and what we saw was a
downward shift in casualties from the unit that had
been there before us, simply because of that
basic human connection that our guys sought to make. And then gradually finding
like, hey, local, you know, people who lived in the town
right next to us were saying, "Hey, you guys should really... Somebody was digging a big
hole a mile down the road. You might wanna bypass
that or check that out," and finding weapons caches and IEDs, improvised explosive
devices and other things that helped save people's lives - On the cost side of things, how is it possible for a
company like Halliburton or others to get away with $40 bananas or however much it was, the overhead costs?
- Yeah. - Look, what they will
claim is that it's expensive to move logistics
through a country at war, but they get away with it, ultimately, this insane war profiteering. And they're not alone, obviously. There are other companies that
this is their business model. They get away with it because of their political connections and the lobbyists that they have, the relationships they
have with politicians, and ultimately, what President Eisenhower warned against with regard to that cozy
relationship between Congress and even what he called then "the military industrial complex." It's been alive and well,
he warned us against it, and I would say it's thriving more now than ever before. - How powerful is the
military industrial complex? As a thing, is it a machine
that can be slowed down, can be stopped, can be reversed? - It can be. It's powerful. I don't think you can overstate
the powerful nature of it because it extends so deeply
within our government. It's not just those in
these specific big defense contracting companies
that benefit from it. You look at the revolving door within the Pentagon, for example, where you have both high ranking people who wear military uniforms as well as those who serve as high ranking Department
of Defense civilians, who are literally working their way into a big payout when
they leave that job. We see it with our own
Secretary of Defense now. He retired as a general officer, went and served on one of the boards for one of the big defense contractors, and then now back as the
Secretary of Defense. We see the same thing in
Congress with members of Congress and senior professional
staffers in Congress. Same exact revolving door
where you have people, whether they're writing contracts for the Department of Defense, for the company that then
wins the bid for that contract and then going and
working for that company, or those in Congress
who are writing policies and doing exactly the same thing. - You have been both a war
hawk and war dove at times. So what is your philosophy on when war is justified
and when it is not? - War is justified when it is in the best interest of
our national security and when it is the last resort, when all diplomatic efforts have been completed and exhausted and war is the last possible route that must be taken to
ensure the safety, security, and freedom of the American people. - So that's a high level beautiful ideal, but there's messy details. So terrorism, for example, - Yes. - The United States' involvement in the war in Iraq and
Afghanistan was, in part, the big umbrella of the war on terrorism. So, you know, when you decide whether something's justified or not and whether something
can be defeated or not, how hard is it, is it even possible? To what degree is it
possible to defeat terrorism? - Well, first of all, part of the problem of our foreign policy has been how many conflicts, wars, military actions have
been waged in the name of this, quote, unquote,
"war on terrorism," in the name of national security, legislation like the Patriot Act that violates civil liberties, our civil liberties and freedoms in the name of the war on terrorism and national security
when it's not justified. And so I'll use Afghanistan as an example. I support the initial mission that lifted off shortly
after the attack on 9/11, the Islamist terrorist attack on 9/11. It was a relatively small
group of U.S. military launched to go after those Al-Qaeda cells and Osama bin Laden in
the wake of that attack. That is the mission that
should have been supported and focused on in its execution. Instead, as you know, attention was diverted very quickly to the regime change war in Iraq that was waged on false pretenses. And the resources and focus was taken away from that initial mission
that went to Afghanistan. And the war in Afghanistan blew up into something that
became about regime change and governance and the Taliban and less focus on Al-Qaeda
and Osama bin Laden. And it became this thing that
even general officers had a hard time articulating,
what is the objective here? What are we trying to accomplish? What does winning look like? At what point do we know it's
time to exit and get out? And as you look at things
like the, you know, the Afghanistan files and others, the answers to these simple
and essential questions shifted and changed over
time, over a very long time. Similarly, in Iraq, you know, I bought into a lot of what was being sold by the administration and by Democrats and Republicans and Congress at the time. And very quickly, even as
I was on the ground there, started to have my eyes opened up into how we had been lied to tremendously, and how that protracted
war went on for a very, very long time with decisions being made that ultimately served to
strengthen terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda, the creation
of ISIS and others, really undermining our national security interests in the meantime. Understanding the enemy that
you are trying to defeat is essential to being
able to build a strategy. The declaration of President
Biden, for example, saying, "Well, the war on terror is over, the war on terror is over," what does that mean? Or the forever wars are over. Well, what does that actually mean? I served on my most
recent deployment in 2021 to East Africa and Somalia, where al-Shabaab is one of those Islamist terrorist groups that follows the same ideology as Al-Qaeda, ISIS, Hamas, and others. This group has been allowed
to grow and be strengthened, even though they are
one of the main groups that provides funding to
Al-Qaeda in that entire region. So any president or politician
can declare a war to be over. But when you have an enemy like these Islamist terrorist groups who are still intent on their
goal and their objective, which is to, ultimately, establish their Islamic
caliphate and, you know, destroy Israel and
exterminate the Jewish people and basically, kill or convert anyone who
doesn't adhere to their ideology, that continues on and they
will only become stronger the longer our leaders put
their heads in the sand and then pretend like, oh
no, this doesn't exist. This kind of war, this war specifically is one that has to be waged militarily and ideologically. And the ideological component to this, which is defeating their
ideology with a superior one is one that I pointed out in Congress during the Obama administration, we, the collective we were failing at, the Obama administration was
failing at because they were so afraid of being labeled Islamophobes, that they refused to accurately identify the ideology driving
these terrorist groups and instead said, "Oh, we are
countering violent extremism," was the term that the Obama administration started to use and was coined and kind of mandated
across the U.S. government. Well, you have to know, again, you have to know the
enemy that threatens you and why they're doing what they're doing, if you have any hope of actually
preventing their attack, both militarily, and as we're seeing now
with Hamas' actions, not only directly in
the assault on Israel, but how Hamas achieved their objectives in spreading their
ideology around the world. - If you look at the lessons learned from the U.S. involvement
in Afghanistan and Iraq, how do you fight terrorism? - Clearly understanding who
they are and where they are and why they're doing what they're doing is essential, first of all. And obviously, there are
different groups, different names. They have morphed and changed based on their locale
and how they operate. Building relationships with
people in other countries, both state leaders as
well as religious leaders and others who share that same objective of defeating these Islamist
terrorists on both fronts and acting as a united
front in taking that action. What exactly that action looks like, details on the ground dictate that, details about these different
groups will dictate that. But we've seen examples of this before, and I saw this in Somalia. We saw it in some cases in
Iraq where, for example, you have Imams who recognize the threat that these terrorist groups pose to their own people and
their own communities and exerting their influence in defeating the terrorist Islamist ideology with their own teachings of Islam and preaching peace amongst their people. War is ugly and it is messy. It is also an unfortunate
reality of the world we live in. So while I firmly believe that
we must always pursue peace, I'm not a pacifist, I'm a realist, and recognize that where
there are these threats, we must do what we can to
work towards that safety, that security, that freedom
and peace that we all want. - If we look at the perspective of Israel in the Israel-Gaza War going on now, what do you do with the fact
that the death of a civilian serves as a catalyst, gives birth to hate, potentially generational hate? So in Israel's stated
goal of destroying Hamas, they are creating immeasurable hate. What do you do with that? From a perspective of Israel, what is the correct action to take in response to October 7th? - It's a complex question
with a complex answer. I think Israel's approach has to be in recognizing that delineation as far as possible. And I know it's tough when you have a terrorist group like Hamas that is so interwoven within the
community of people in Gaza. But to recognize that there should be and there is a shared purpose there for the Palestinian people to be able to live free and in peace and not under the oppression
of this terrorist group, just as the people of Israel
would like to live in peace and free from the threat of
attack from a terrorist group that wants to exterminate them. The complexities of what's
going on in Israeli politics is, I think a different conversation, but also one that is directly intertwined with the answer to this question. When you have some people
in the Israeli government who don't want the Palestinian
people in Gaza at all and want them to go and
repatriate in other countries, I think that's a big problem, and that further exacerbates this hatred and resentment that
continues to grow there. This is a generation's long
challenge, unfortunately, of the resentment and tension that exists between many Israelis
and many Palestinians that can only be resolved
when there's strong leadership representing both peoples who are able and willing to come together and recognize that the only way forward is to let the past be in the past and find a way towards
peace in the future. - How do you think, how do you hope the war
in Ukraine will end? - The only way that this war ends is to do exactly what we're talking about. There has to be a brokered dialogue and conversation about
peace that has to occur with representatives
from Russia and Ukraine. It is really truly
heartbreaking to see both how efforts that began just weeks after Russia invaded
Ukraine to do exactly this were thwarted by the
Biden-Harris administration and other Western powers has cost so many innocent people's lives. And this is where I get... I have friends in Ukraine, I've been there more than a few times. I've enjoyed and appreciated
the time that I've spent there. When I hear from my friends about how afraid they are
of their husbands being conscripted and, you know, feeling like they have to hide for fear of being yanked off the streets, their friends and family members who've been killed in this war, the only way this ends is when both sides come to the table and find an agreement that neither side is gonna
be completely happy with, both sides being forced
to make some concessions, but one where they will both walk away and this war can end. - What's the role of the
U.S. President perhaps to bring everybody to the table? Do you think that the U.S.
President should sit down with Zelenskyy, Putin together? - Yes, yes. In an ideal world, yes. This should have happened long ago. The question of whether
or not President Biden is the right person to do that at this time, when all of the statements and
comments that they have made, the Biden-Harris administration has made from the beginning of this war essentially point to their objective being to basically, destroy Russia. And that's one of the reasons
why they have supported both the continuation of this war
for as long as it's lasted, as well as why they have
thwarted efforts towards peace. Whoever that most
effective neutral broker is that that's the best person to do this. The Biden-Harris administration, I think the role that they have to take is actually encouraging Zelenskyy to sit down and begin this process. Those kinds of engagements
are the most, to me, the most powerful exercises of diplomacy that can't be matched, especially when our
President's foremost role and responsibility is to
serve as Commander in Chief. And I wish that we had
leaders who were more willing to engage because I think we'd make a lot more progress more quickly and to find areas both of mutual interest as well as to help deconflict
and deescalate areas where there is tension or disagreement or adversarial interests. - Well, some of it is
basic human comradery. Like people call me naive for this, but sometimes just knowing that there's a human on the other side.
- Yes. - Even like when it's in private, if you look at Zelenskyy
and Putin, for example, just humor. Both are very intelligent, witty, at times, even funny people. Yes, this is wartime, yes, a lot of civilians
and soldiers are dying. There's hate. But if you can look above it all and think about the
future of the countries, the flourishing of a people and the stopping of the death
of civilians and soldiers, then in that place you can have that basic human connection. - I agree. I don't think
that's naive at all. And I think there are so many examples through history that point
to the power of that, the real power in that. In, you know, the Cuban Missile Crisis, how JFK had to literally find a secret way to communicate with Khrushchev to try to go around the backs of
the military commanders who were urging him to
take military action, and instead find, "Hey, we both, ultimately, want the same thing. Neither of us wants to launch
a catastrophic nuclear war, so let's figure this out." - Of course, there's examples
throughout history, you know, leaders are complicated people,
they're manipulative people. So you have like Hitler
and Chamberlain meeting and Chamberlain kinda-
- Yeah. - getting hoodwinked by Hitler's charisma and being convinced that Hitler
doesn't have any interest in invading and destroying
the rest of the world. So, you know, you have to- - He's smart. (chuckles) Don't be hoodwinked. (chuckles)
(Lex chuckling) - You've met, you've
been criticized for this, you've met with Syrian
President Bashar Assad, and as part of the campaign when, you know, running for president, got criticized for not
calling him a war criminal. What's the right way to meet and communicate
with these kinds of leaders? - As I just stated, we need leaders who have
the courage to meet, not just with allies, but with adversaries in
the pursuit of peace, in the pursuit of increased understanding. If policies are being made through the lenses and the
barriers of bureaucrats and the media and others who have or may have their own interests, our President, a leader can't make, even members of Congress
can't make decisions with the kind of clarity that we, the American people need them to make. I think that these
kinds of engagements are weaponized and politicized,
as they were against me, by those who have their own interests, whether it be the military
industrial complex or in Washington. If you're not part of
the official narrative of the U.S. government, which was intent on a
regime change war in Syria, then you're an outcast. And it was unfortunate because, you know, people levied all kinds of
accusations and, you know, smears against me for going and having the audacity to go and learn more, try to seek the truth in the hopes of preventing
more needless war, and in the hopes of preventing
yet another quagmire and disastrous war in the Middle East and simply foregoing and yes, meeting with Assad. Also meeting with
religious leaders in Syria, also meeting and talking with people on the streets of Damascus, talking with college students, talking with people from
the opposition party who would like to see Assad replaced, you know, talking with local law, just a whole host of people over the course of a few days, you know, the accusation was of you, like, "Oh, she loves dictators." It's a sad state of affairs when some of the most
influential voices in our country will label someone a lover
or supporter of dictators, simply because you're saying, "Hey, we shouldn't be going
to war. There is another way." And I'm not alone in this. You know, people who were
against the war in Iraq were given similar labels until it became, you know, popular in our politics to
have been against the Iraq war. We see the same thing now with people like Tucker, myself and
others, who are saying, "We should not be waging this proxy war against Russia, via Ukraine, and using the Ukrainian
people's lives in this war." Well, now all of a sudden, you're a Putin lover or a
Putin puppet or whatever, you know, the traitor, treason, all of these accusations
that are used, ultimately, by people who are not interested in having a substantive conversation
about the truth, about looking at these wars
and conflicts, you know, with a comprehensive view on exactly all the
dynamics that are at play. And that's what I found when I came back. When I went to Syria, looking forward to coming back and shedding light on different
perspectives, experiences, and stories that I found that would give people a
more broad understanding of what was happening in that country, and what I found was
there was zero interest in the mainstream media or in Congress in hearing any other perspective other than their own, which was, "We need to launch this regime change war through the use of arming and equipping known terrorists within Syria
to overthrow the regime" without them stating any realistic idea of who would take control
once Assad was overthrown. But the reality actually being that no matter which opposition group they might try to prop up, they would not have the power to withstand the terrorist
groups whose stated goal was to go and take over power from Assad. They had no interest in trying
to gain true understanding. And it was very disheartening, it was very disheartening
and a big lesson learned about where their interests
really were focused. - Yeah, it's a simplistic
narrative template that's fit into every single situation. A lot of stuff is not talked about in the Russia-Ukraine war. One of the things that's
not talked about is, Okay, so Putin is overthrown, then who do you think
will come into power? - [Tulsi] Exactly. - And one of the things I
talk about with our stoics is that Putin, and he gets
criticized for this, that Putin, out of all the
people that might take power, is the most liberal, is the most dovish. - [Tulsi] Mm. - In fact, every indication shows that
he really hates this war. - [Tulsi] Mm. - And so everybody that will step in, if he steps down or if he is overthrown, is just going to accelerate this war and the expansionism and
the thirst for empire and all that kinda stuff that the U.S. military industrial
complex will feed into. So you have to think about
what the future holds and what the different power players are and what the level of corruption there is and sort of the realistic
view of the situation versus the idealistic
view of the situation. - Just on that note real quick, I think that was exposed in broad daylight when it appeared that, you know, the former head of the Wagner group was about to try to launch a coup and how that was so
celebrated even on, you know, like MSNBC and Rachel Maddow and others touting that this was somehow
going to be a great thing without looking at, you
know, who is this guy really, what has he been doing in different countries around the world and what would be his kind of ruling philosophy and how that would differ or
benefit American interests or the interest of security and peace. - But also the interest
of Ukraine or Russia and humanity overall-
- True, true. - just the flourishing of nations, which is great for everybody and collaborations with nations. - [Tulsi] I agree. - Friendly competition. You know, one of the things I love about the 20th century is the friendly, sometimes not so friendly competition between the Soviet Union
and the United States in space, in the space race.
- Mm. - That's created some
incredible engineering and scientific breakthroughs
and all of this, and also made people dream about like reaching out to the stars and war destroys all of that-
- Yeah. - or damages it,
hopefully just damages it. Hopefully, the phoenix will rise again. Well, let me ask you about
the criticism you've mentioned of this probably the most
common criticism of you that you love Putin. So just to linger on it, what do you think is the
foundation of this criticism? - Well, I'll tell you when it began. You know, my first day in Congress
was January 3rd, 2013. I believe it was the third, fourth, fifth, somewhere around there. And my last day was January 3rd, 2021. Given my experience of serving as a soldier in the Middle East and the motivation that really drove me to run for Congress in the first place, I served on the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Armed Services Committee
for almost eight years, the eight years that I was there with my drive and motivation
to actually be in a position to challenge the influence of the military industrial complex to try to prevent us from
needlessly going to war. And so, you know, the likes of Hillary Clinton and the cabal of warmongers in Washington, they weren't fans of
mine, to say the least. I can't say it was a total surprise, but it was nonetheless that
the very day that I announced my candidacy that I was
running for president, which was in February, 2019, the hour that I walked up onto that stage to announce my candidacy,
it was in Hawaii, and I gave my announcement speech, NBC News published a hit piece that planted the seeds of
suspicion in voters' minds that somehow I was a darling of Putin and Russia and whatever. It was baseless, all of it baseless, and that continued like a steady drumbeat throughout my candidacy. But that really was escalated when, in a podcast with David Axelrod,
Hillary Clinton said, oh, "Well, the Russians are grooming her," and this is not, I mean this came from a very influential person.
- Yeah. - She was the former Secretary of State, former U.S. Senator, former First Lady, someone who wielded and
continues to wield a lot of power in the Democratic
Party and amongst voters. And that took it to a whole new level. What is the basis for this? Nothing. It is a tired, yet dependable playbook that is used not only by
people like Hillary Clinton, but also people like
Mitt Romney and others to try to smear, discredit, and destroy the reputations of people who have the audacity to question their objectives as they
call for one war or another, or have the audacity
to say that this is not in the best interest of peace or in our country, in
our national security. They keep going back to this playbook, as they do today, because again, they're not willing to
debate the substance of one position versus another, which is what we should have. If people feel so strongly
that we should be going and waging this war or
that war, okay, great. Go make your case to the American people. Go stand on the floor of
the United States House and actually have this debate. Allow those who are saying,
"No, this is not a good idea," to also stand freely
and make that argument. Instead, they resort to the kind of name calling that tells voters, Hey, you can't trust this person
or anything that they say. Myself and some of my other colleagues got the same treatment when we tried to pass legislation in Congress that would have taken out
provisions from the Patriot Act that are most egregiously violating our Fourth Amendment
rights and civil liberties, authorities that have
allowed our government to illegally surveil
Americans without a warrant. And as we did, so we're called traitors. We had other members of Congress
on the House floor saying that "If you pass this legislation, you will be responsible for another 9/11 style
attack on our soil." These are all distraction tactics to try to divert our attention away from what's actually happening. And instead, just tell voters, Hey, you can't trust these people. Obviously, this has happened to Trump, it's happened to Bobby Kennedy, it's happened to people
like Rand Paul and others. There's a small group,
but a growing number, at least I'm on the
Republican side at this point, people who are actually
willing to stand up and challenge the military
industrial complex, challenge the warmongers in both parties. - Well, people on the left have challenged the warmongers as well
throughout the last few decades, - Less so recently. I agree with you, but less so recently, and this is one of the reasons why I left the Democratic Party, one of the foremost reasons. I devote an entire chapter to this issue in my book "For Love of Country: Leave the Democrat Party Behind," going into the detail of some of the things we've talked about, about my own experiences, about what I have learned along the way, but also how, you know, even in the last year or two years, certainly under this Administration, people who I worked with in
Congress who were Democrats, dependable voices for civil liberties, dependable voices speaking
out against the insanity of people who wanted to wage
war for the sake of war, they're largely silent now. And unfortunately, within the Democratic party in Washington, there is no room for debate that if you challenge the
Biden administration's position on foreign policy, you're
gonna hear about it. And what we have seen is that, that's exactly what's happened, and people have retracted
statements or just fallen silent. Or whatever the case may be, this debate that should be
existent within both parties on the Democrat side, unfortunately, it just doesn't exist anymore. - There seems to be some
kind of mass hysteria over the war in Ukraine. It was strange to watch
that the nuance aspect of the discussion was lost very quickly. It was Putin, bad.
- Right. - It was a war between good and evil. - [Tulsi] Right. - And in that, if you bring up any kinda
nuance discussion of like, how do we actually achieve
peace in the situation, you're immediately put
on the side of evil. - Yeah, which is pretty sick
when you think about it. - I mean it's, you know,
the cynical view is, of course, it's the military
industrial complex machine, the war profiteers just driving
this kind of conversation. - [Tulsi] Yeah. - You know, I hope they
don't have that much power. I hope they just have
incentives and they push people and they kinda use people's natural desire to divide the world into good and evil and fight for the side of good. You know, people just have a
natural proclivity for that. And that's a good thing that we wanna fight for the side of good, but then that gets captured-
- It is, and manipulated. - [Lex] Yeah. - Yes. I admire your hopefulness. I am hopeful also because of the goodness in people and the naturally
compassionate nature of people. However, I will tell you
from firsthand experience that what we talk about is
the national security state and the military industrial complex, this cabal of warmongers that extends not only within government, but outside of government, extends to many powerful media outlets, they are incredibly powerful
and don't have any qualms at destroying those who try to get in the way of their power and they've got a lot of tools. They've got a lot of tools to do that, which I think is why
President Eisenhower chose to include this in his
farewell address as a warning. Because the only recourse, the only real power that has
the ability to destroy them and stand up against them is a free people living in a free society exercising the rights
that we have enshrined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights. - I just talked to Annie Jacobsen. She wrote a book on nuclear war, a scenario of how a
nuclear war will happen, second by second, minute by minute. I apologize, if it happens,
how it would happen. It's terrifying. - [Tulsi] Yeah. - It's terrifying how easy it is to start that one person can
start it, first of all. And then there's no way to stop it, even potentially with
tactical nuclear weapons that the machinery of it, how clueless everybody is combined with the machinery of it, it's just impossible to stop. and it's just between the Russian that, the United States especially, and then all of a sudden
you have nuclear winter and 5 billion people are dead. - [Tulsi] Yeah. - And they die through just
essentially torture, slowly. How do we avoid that? How
do we avoid a nuclear war? That's something that you
talk about and think about. How do we avoid this kind
of escalation of a hot war? - I think the most essential
thing, first of all, is understanding exactly
what you have just detailed. We are in this very
strange and absurd time where we have talking heads,
and so-called pundits on TV. We have politicians, we have people who are
talking about a nuclear war as though it is a war
that can be won, period, and a war that can be waged somehow without that risk of escalation to the point of destruction
of human civilization. And so they talk about this as
though it's just another war. And especially as they talk about the use of tactical nuclear weapons and "Oh, well, this is small and we think it'll send a message," without actually escalating to the point where we're dealing with
the kind of destruction that we witnessed in World War II. That's a dangerous thing when it becomes like normalized as, you know, "Well, we've got this
new missile that'll go and it's targeted and it's strategic and it'll only harm this, quote, unquote, "military target." Ronald Reagan was 100% correct
when he said, you know, "A nuclear war cannot be won
and should never be waged." It was true then, and it's true now, no matter how much these guys who are producing these weapons or those who are benefiting
from that industry try to tell us, "Oh,
no, it'll never happen." So to me, that's an important first step, to continue to inform and educate and sound the alarms to people. Don't buy this crap because it's not true. And I look forward to
listening to your podcast, but the PSA that was put out by New York City's
Emergency Management Office about what to do in the
event of a nuclear attack, you would find it funny if it
wasn't so deeply disturbing. How they created this
public service announcement, they distributed it everywhere across the city, on the internet. I think it was on the radio where you had a woman who
appeared to be an actor coming in and saying, "Hey, in the event of when the big one hits, here's what you should do. Focus on doing these three things." And I'm paraphrasing, but I
encourage you to watch it. I'm paraphrasing, but she said, Get inside, stay inside and stay tuned. That was it. And you know, get inside,
go away from the windows. Stay inside, don't go outside
until you get the all clear, and stay tuned. Follow our account on Instagram and Twitter.
- Right. - And at the very end of this short PSA, her closing words were, "We've got this." And it was so disturbing in that it was so completely outta touch with reality. It creates this kind of
false sense of security that, okay, well, it's kinda like, here's what you do when a tornado hits or when a big storm hits, and categorizing the big one, a nuclear attack within that
same kind of preparedness that you would want people to have in the event of a
natural disaster of some sort. And it is reflective of the carelessness with which people in our government, that careless attitude that
people in our government have towards nuclear war and a nuclear attack, even as they set us up for failure in pushing us closer and closer to the brink of a nuclear war occurring, whether it be an intentional attack or as we saw during the last Cold War, one that could be
launched unintentionally. You know, how many near misses were there during the last Cold War? I saw this documentary called
"The Man Who Saved the World," and it was some like mid-level officer who happened to be on duty and who didn't do what he was told in launching the nuclear missiles because of what they thought
was an incoming attack. And it turned out to be a complete mistake or misread on the radar, but
that's what we're facing. - By the way, there's so
many things to say there, but one of the things that
an Annie Jacobsen details is just how organized the
machinery of all of this is where the humans involved
don't have to think. They just follow orders.
- Mm. - There's a very clear
set of steps you take and that there's very few places where you can inject your
humanity and be like, wait a minute, what's
the big picture of this? The only person that can think is the
president of the United States. - [Tulsi] Mm. - The president of the United States gets six minutes after the warning. The early warning system says,
whether it's false or not, says that we believe that there's been a nuclear weapon launched. You have six minutes before
you can make the decision of launch back, initiate. And to me, that's what
I'm voting based on. (chuckles)
- Right. - In the current situation, you really have to see that as one of the most important aspects- - [Tulsi] I agree. - of the United States President is who do you trust in those
six minutes to sit there? And I'm not really sure,
looking at Biden and Trump. Boy, I don't know, but I do know that I would like somebody who's thinking independently and not part of the
machinery of warmongers. That's really, I mean, I don't wanna make it
sound cynical or dramatic, but sometimes in such scary situations and such dramatic situations, you kinda follow the momentum. - [Tulsi] Yes. - When the right thing to do, the right thing for a
leader to do is to step back and look of all of human history- - [Tulsi] Yeah. - and ignore all the people
in the room that are like saying stuff because most
likely what they're going to be saying is warmongery type of things. - [Tulsi] Yes. - That's one of the things
why I also get criticized for, I still think Zelenskyy is
a hero for staying in Kiev. Everybody was telling him to flee. It was all the information
was basically saying the world's second
biggest military is like coming at Kiev. It's just dumb on all
fronts to stay in Kiev, but that's what a great leader does, is ignores everybody and stays. - [Tulsi] Yeah. - Screw it. I'm gonna die for my country.
I'm gonna die as a leader. And that's the right
thing for leaders to do. - It's sad that, I mean, to me, that's what we should expect of our leaders-
- Yes. - is exactly that. And it's sad that having a leader in that position fulfill
their responsibility and the oath that they take
is seen as a heroic act when we should, like, that's your job. That's what we elect our leaders to do. And yet so many, so many have failed. But to your point, it's not cynical at all to to know that in those rooms, especially
in these moments of crisis, unfortunately, there are the predominant and prevailing opinion of this warmongering establishment that's not specific to one party is the knee-jerk reaction, which is to go to war or
to execute an act of war. And this is, you know, one of the biggest of this establishment destroying the reputations of, and smearing and trying to cancel and censor those who are voices of peace or just those who take
a contrarian position and say, "Well, hey, why don't we just pause for a moment and actually think this through? Why don't we talk through what happens if we take this course of action? What happens if we go
down a different path? Let's actually be thoughtful about what our options
are for A, B, and C, and then make the decision in a thoughtful manner based on that." Even advocating for that
is seen as a kind of heresy in the warmongering
establishment in Washington. The cost of their retaliation against those who are reasonable voices, who look at the world as it is not some fantasy that they wish existed, is in those rooms. During those critical
moments, people will, even if they know in
their heart or their mind that this could end really badly, their instinct is to
self-censor and not speak up because they don't want to
experience the wrath and ire, whether it be coming from four
star generals or, you know, the secretaries of state or defense or these high ranking people in positions of power and influence. They don't wanna be the one guy
in the room who's just like, Hey guys, let's just take a breath and actually think this
through, what will happen, not just in the immediate response of this action that you're advocating for, but what are all of the
other people, other actors, stakeholders in the world,
how will they respond? And then how will we respond to them? How will they respond to us? Actually go through this
exercise of, in the military, this is commonly referred to as, you know, "What are the second, third,
fourth order of effects that will occur as a result of pursuing a specific course of action?" - It's weird how difficult it is to be that person in the room. - It requires courage. - Yeah, but like-
- Which is sad, but it requires courage. - But why does it require, like even just to ask, okay, we've been in Afghanistan and Iraq for this number of years,
what's the exit plan? - [Tulsi] Right. - Just bring that up like
every day in a meeting. - Yeah. (chuckles) - Like what's the exit plan? It's strange that that gets criticized, well, war in Iraq and so on. But I just remember,
there was this pressure. You can't quite criticize or like, ask dumb questions about, Wait, what? Why are we going into Iraq again? Like-
- But they're not dumb questions. (chuckles)
- Right. In retrospect, you're like, "Oh, they're not dumb questions at all," but actually-
- Yeah, yeah. - required a lot of courage- - [Tulsi] Yeah. - to ask them while still
working within the institution. It's easier if you're like an activist from the outside saying-
- Sure. - "No war," this kind of stuff.
- Sure. - But within the institution in the position of power
to ask the questions, like, maybe let's not? - [Tulsi] Yeah. (chuckles) - It seems really difficult.
- Yeah. - And the same kind of
thing in the war in Ukraine and just any kind of military involvement. Again, I guess the
cynical interpretation is that it's the military industrial complex that permeates-
- Yes. - just the halls of power. - It does. And what is behind the
military industrial complex? And there are different examples of this. You can look at the
pharmaceutical industry as well. There's a huge amount of money
and a huge amount of power that wields tremendous influence
over members of Congress. You know, there are
different examples of this, you know, across different
sectors of our society, but I think the military
industrial complex, over time, has proven itself to be the most powerful and influential. And that's what is behind it is, is this is why they try to
destroy anyone who dares to ask the most obvious questions is because it is about
power and wielding power. - Well, the good thing about
United States president is they have the power to say F
you to everybody in the room, I think.
- They do. - It just seems like they
don't quite take that power. Like you really, people say like, "Yeah, the U.S. President doesn't
have that much power," I don't know about that. Just like if you look at the
law, especially in military, when you're talking about war and the military, they
have a lot of power. - Yes. - So they can fire everybody, like-
- Yes. - they have a lot of power. They can stop wars, they can start wars. They have a lot of power. - The position of the
presidency certainly does. Unfortunately, we have people too often
who assume the presidency from a position of weakness because they're afraid of losing power. - [Lex] Sure. - And so they make those
calculated decisions not based on what is right or for the right reasons, but instead, driven by fear of loss of
power and loss of influence. And that's where, especially given all that we are facing, we need leaders in the
presidency and in Congress who have courage to be
that voice in the room to remain mindful of and
rooted in the Constitution to, even as we are seeing this legislation being billed as the anti-TikTok bill, that's really not about TikTok, it's about freedom of speech. - Can you actually explain that bill? - Yes. This is another, I guess the bottom line, up front, is this is another piece of legislation being expedited through Congress with strong bipartisan support in the name of national security interests that is essentially a power grab and an assault on freedom and liberty. And I'll just say this in, I think probably like the top three things that they're not actually
telling us that's in the bill. Freedom of speech. It's our ability to be
able to express ourselves, whether it be in person, on a podcast, on a social media platform, in a newspaper, whatever
the platform may be. This legislation gives
the executive the power to decide which platforms are acceptable, for us to be able to use TikTok itself. The words TikTok is not
in actually in the bill, but it gives the power to
the president to decide who is a foreign
adversary, single handedly, no consultation with or agreement from members of Congress or anyone else. It actually gives the power
to a cabinet secretary to designate who is a foreign adversary. And if a social media
platform has at least 20% ownership in a social media platform, that platform may be banned from doing business in
America, essentially. But it's not just a foreign state actor that could be named as
a foreign adversary. It also includes a line in
the legislation that if... Let's say a person has at
least 25% financial interest or ownership in a social media platform. They're an American citizen who may be working or
living in some other country or working or living here, but doing business with other countries. If the executive branch
of our government decides that this individual is
under the influence of, or controlled by someone that
they deem a foreign adversary, then that platform must not do business in America. And that person, obviously,
and even an American citizen, is banned from conducting that business. They must divest, essentially. So when you look at, and this is where there's been
a lot of chat around this, when you look at Elon Musk, for example, well, you already have people
in the Biden administration, even President Biden himself, implying that Elon Musk's activities need to be investigated. Well, he is someone with
Tesla who does business in a lot of countries, including China, and therefore, he must be investigated. It is not at all a stretch of imagination to say that X could be the next platform that the executive branch decides, Nope, we've designated this person
to be a foreign adversary, and therefore, his business interest for this social media platform cannot be allowed to exist. We've seen this already with
people accusing him and X of interfering in our elections. Again, it it's ironic that it's coming from the Democratic party that they are claiming that
a guy who has said himself, he's committed to free speech and is allowing free
speech on his platform and is not allowing the federal government to manipulate his platform by deeming which accounts
are okay to, you know, post their content and
which accounts are not because of disinformation or
whatever they claim it to be. It's not an accident that
the social media platforms that have been proven to
take action at the behest of the federal government
and the White House to censor certain voices, they're not included with
or being targeted at all in this legislation or outside of it. Yet other platforms
that are not cooperating or collaborating somehow are. So the underlying issue here, this is being sold as TikTok
and National Security, but ultimately, even as Ron Paul said, "This is legislation
that's the greatest assault on liberty since the
Patriot Act was passed. - Yeah. It's quite dark that
this is just a grab of power. - [Tulsi] It is. - I mean it's not just with
Elon, it's probably with Zuck, with Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp. It puts pressure, it's
not just about banning, but it puts pressure for them
to kinda moderate behavior- - [Tulsi] Yes. - which is a slippery slope. Of course, it's a beautiful dance of power because you don't want tech companies to have too much power either, or individuals at the top of those tech companies
to have too much power, but then, do you want that power
in the hands of government? - [Tulsi] No. - The history of this nation
is a fascinatingly effective journey towards the balance of power and it does seem like
this sneaky little thing, as much as I hate TikTok on all fronts. My brain rots every time I use TikTok.
(Tulsi chuckling) I know it is also, like, the national security
dangers of China and so on. But it's just like, TikTok, man, just, I just, I dunno, it's so addicting, it's so addicting. So when I first saw this TikTok bill, I was like, "Yes," no pun,
(Tulsi chuckling) but then they got me,
the Trojan horse got me. No-
- They all, I mean, they all, and you know, and this is like "The
Social Dilemma" documentary I think exposed a lot that there's so much that these algorithms do in these various social media platforms that's problematic to say the least. Data security and privacy
is a serious issue. These are serious things. And so let's have a conversation
about these serious things and cease these attempts to have our government try to tell us what we are and aren't
allowed to see, you know, where we are and aren't allowed
to say, what we wanna say. That's really what it comes down to. - Yeah, more and more trust people to, whenever social media
companies do bullshitty things for the people to make
documentaries about it, to discover-
- Right. - for great journalists
to do great journalism- - [Tulsi] Right. - and find the flaws and
the hypocrisy in the, like a call for transparency, all those kinds of things that
don't trust, in most cases, government regulation
of technology companies because they seem to
be really out of touch that one-
- Yeah. - they want power. - [Tulsi] Yeah. - They're really intimidated by the power that the tech companies have. And two, they don't seem to
get at the technology at all. So they're like hindering innovation and they're just greedy for power-
- Yeah. - and those are not the- - It's a bad combination. - [Lex] It's a bad combination. - The thing here too
though is this extends far beyond social media companies. You know, this is a very specific example, but it's one example of many how those who are greedy for power are continuing to try to find ways to tell us how to live our lives. They are increasingly trying to tell us, again, what we're allowed to see and hear, whether it be social media companies or what shows up in a Google
Search engine, for example. And if they're not finding a willing and compliant social media
company or big tech company, then they are looking for
ways to reach their hand into those tech companies
and force compliance. But, you know, in the
age of disinformation, misinformation, hate speech, all of the excuses that
are given for government, either directly or
indirectly through big tech to try to censor certain voices, it really undermines the truth, which is the way to defeat bad speech is with better speech and more speech, whether it's hate speech, or things that you might be offended by, or things that you might disagree with. The answer is not to have some entity with
the power of censorship and being the, quote, unquote, "authority" to decide what is good
speech and acceptable and what is bad speech and unacceptable. It's what you said, let's
encourage this debate and, you know, encourage people
who are inspired by like, "No man, I saw this thing," or "this thing is happening
and it's pissing me off," so I'm gonna bring a superior argument. I'm gonna show what the right way is. And gosh, what this is what
our founders envisioned for us as a society in this country. And we would be so much stronger
with a more engaged people and a more informed people if we had this and had it supported. - What are the chances that
the TikTok Ban Bill passes? - The way that it passed through the House of Representatives with such an overwhelming
bipartisan support and so quickly, and President Biden saying that if it comes across
as desk, he'll sign it, I thought it would pass
through very quickly. I'm only slightly encouraged by the fact that the Senate at least
appears to be saying, Hey, there are serious free speech
concerns around this bill, serious civil liberties
concerns around this bill. We need to do our due diligence. I won't say I'm cautiously optimistic because I understand how that place works, but their pause at least
gives people the opportunity to continue to kind of sound the alarm and for people to call their senators and express their concerns with this that are very real, valid concerns. - Yeah, this is really messed up. Just in case we didn't make it clear, I think this is really, really big danger if this thing passes. Even if you hate Elon
Musk or you're whatever, this is really, really, really dangerous. If the government gets
say over the platforms on which we communicate with
each other is a huge problem. - And there's a section in there as well, just kind of the last piece on this, is if you use a VPN and you try to use a VPN to access this, you could have problems with the law. And you take that a step further and say, well, how would they know? There's a surveillance aspect to that. So once you start peeling back the layers of this really toxic
onion, (chuckles) it leads, it really leads seriously to a pretty dark and dangerous and oppressive place. - You were a long-time Democrat. You were the vice chair of the
Democratic National Committee until you resigned in
2016 to endorse Bernie. I should say, I love Bernie. I loved him before he was cool, all right?
(Tulsi chuckling) Anyway, can you go through what
happened in that situation- - Yeah. - and with the Democratic
National Committee and with Bernie and why you resigned? - As a vice chair of the
Democratic National Committee, one of the rules of the DNC required was that officers of the DNC of which we were as I
think there were five or six of us who were
vice chairs at the time, you have to remain neutral
in a Democratic primary. So you're not, as a party, supposed to be tipping the
scales in any direction for any candidate during
a primary election. And so I had no plans to get involved for any candidate or against any candidate
during that primary and just the hopes of like, all right, we gotta make sure that this
is a fair and balanced primary so that voters have the
best opportunity to vote for the candidate of their choosing. I saw a couple of things pretty quickly. Number one is that the
chair of the DNC at the time was a woman named Debbie
Wasserman Schultz, a congresswoman out of Florida. And she made very serious
decisions unilaterally that many times we found out about via tweet or press release that showed she was tilting
the scales in the favor of Hillary Clinton in that 2016 primary. The other thing that I saw
was how the mainstream media and those who are supposed
to be in a position to be neutral arbiters, to facilitate debates and
forums and conversations so that voters can be best informed in who they wanna vote for, were calling Hillary Clinton
the most qualified person ever to run for president in
the history of our country because of the positions that she had held as Secretary of State, as a
U.S. Senator, as First Lady. And yet they glossed over those titles without ever holding her,
asking questions even, or holding her to account for her record, especially in the area of foreign policy. The job she was running for
was to be Commander in Chief, to be the president of the United States. That responsibility to
serve as Commander in Chief is the foremost responsibility
a president has. It's essentially the one
area where the president can unilaterally make decisions without... Education, healthcare, immigration, Congress has to actually pass legislation. President can come through and say, Hey, here's the policies I want. Here's legislation that I'll propose, but that those changes can't
be made without Congress, working with Congress to pass them. So she was essentially being let off the hook for her record. As an American, as a
soldier, as a veteran, that was a big problem for me. And so I made the decision to resign as vice chair of the DNC so that I could endorse Bernie Sanders, who largely at heart, I believe
is a non-interventionist. He hasn't focused a lot on foreign policy. It's not at the heart of what his focus has been for decades, but he was certainly far more of a non-interventionist
than Hillary Clinton, who has shown through her record to be the queen of
warmongers in Washington. I wanted to be in a position
where I would have a platform to inform voters about her record so that they could make
that decision for themselves so that they could see, hey,
in this area on this issue, which is incredibly important, there is a clear contrast
between these two candidates running in the Democratic primary. And that's what drove
my decision to resign and to endorse Bernie Sanders. And that's what I went on to do throughout the rest of
that primary election. - What do you like most
about Bernie, the positive? - You know, what I like most about him is, is he is who he is, unapologetically so-
- Yeah. - both in personality, but
also in what he advocates for, and what he's advocated
for for a long time. So, you know, you can agree or
disagree with his positions, but he is who he is. - Like I said, you were
a long-time Democrat, you ran for president
in 2020 as a Democrat. Now you're an independent and you wrote an excellent
book describing your journey ideologically,
philosophically through that. Why did you choose to
leave the Democratic Party? - In the book, I go into a number of the central reasons
why I made that choice, but fundamental to them is that the Democratic
party has become a party that is opposed to freedom, that is opposed to the central
and foundational principles that exist within our founding documents and that serve as the identity
of who we are as Americans and what this country
is supposed to be about. It has become a party that is controlled by this elitist
cabal of warmongers who are driving forward this,
quote, unquote, "woke agenda." And we see it through their
racializing of everything. We see this through their
defund the police mission. We see this through their
open border policies. We see this through how in their education policy
they're failing our kids and how they are pushing this narrative that ultimately, is a
rejection of objective truth. The fact that it's a
question up for debate about whether or not, well, actually it's not a
question up for debate for them. They are actively pushing for, you know, boys who identify as girls to compete against girls in sports, changing our language
so that the word woman, the identity of being a woman is essentially being
erased from our society. And it is the height of
hypocrisy and, frankly, an act of hatred towards women that they are so intent on doing this, and ironic that it's coming
from the party that for so long proclaim themselves to
be the greatest feminist and the most pro-woman
party in the country. I go into detail around each
of these issues and more in the book, but you will see as we go
through each of these issues, fundamental and foundational to every one of them is that, sadly, the Democratic party has become a party that is so consumed by
their desire for power, this insatiable hunger for power, that they are willing to destroy our Republic, our democracy, our freedom, just so that they can try to hold onto to power and gain more power. - So these are just different
mechanisms for power. The identity politics-
- Yes. - and the warmongering
are related to each other in that they're mechanisms
to attain more power. - [Tulsi] Yes. - You know, you're making it sound like only the Democratic party are full of power-hungry people. So to you... You know, the Republican party, I don't know if you've met those folks, but some of them-
- Couple of them. (chuckles) - are also in love with power and are, you know-
- Yes. - at times, to some degree, politicians in general are corrupt, sometimes within the legal bound, sometimes slightly outside
of the legal bounds. And so to you, to what degree is sort of
the Democratic party worse than the Republican party? So I don't wanna paint a
picture of like this kinda beautiful vision of the Republican party, that they're somehow-
- No, that doesn't exit. - not power hungry. - Yeah. I'm glad you brought this up. You know, the book, the book details why after 20 or so years as a member of the Democratic
Party, I decided to leave, and it goes through my experiences and things that I have seen
and learned along the way, but I also point out exactly
that fact in the book. But from the very beginning
with the prologue is, "We should not be naive to think that this only exists within
the Democratic party." There are very serious problems within both of our political parties, specifically coming from politicians who are driven by this desire for power and who are so afraid
of losing that power, that they're willing to do whatever they feel they need to do, which centers around
taking away our freedom because the more free we are
to make our own decisions, even if they may end up
being the wrong decisions, but to learn from those things and know that we've gotta
live with the consequences, the beauty and messiness of
what a free society looks like. They're so afraid of us because they see us as the people and our freedom as the central threat to their ability to remain in power. I think the difference
that we're seeing today is that, unfortunately, we
talked about this a little bit, how the Democratic
party has become a party where you must walk in lockstep with the leadership of that party or risk being faced with, you know, your reputation being
destroyed and smeared and all of these different attacks. And the reason why they do that is to put people like me and Bobby Kennedy and others up as an
example of saying, "Hey, if you step outta line,
if you challenge us, this is what we're gonna do to you." The Republican party has also done that, and they also have politicians and leaders
who are more interested in feeding, you know, the thriving system in the
Washington establishment. But we are also seeing that the Republican party
also has some voices, and I would say increasing
voices of people and I would put Donald
Trump in this category who are challenging the, quote, unquote, "norms
of the Republican party" that are represented by people like Nikki Haley or
Mike Pence, for example. You know, the Republican party
is not a monolithic entity and you know, it means different
things to different people. And that's where I
think the real challenge in this next election is it's really less about one
political party over another and it's more about our opportunity as voters to select leaders, first of all, to fire those
who are against freedom and who are warmongers
who by their essence are willing to take away our freedom in the name of national security, and vote for people, nobody's perfect, we shouldn't hold
anybody up on a pedestal, but vote for those who are
committed to the Constitution and who hold those values that represent the
interests of the people. - (sighs) I'm not a fan of this choice, but here we are, Biden versus Trump. So let me ask you sort of a challenging question
of pros and cons. Can you gimme pros and cons of each. What's the biggest strength
and biggest limitation of, let's say Biden? - This is a tough question. I've known President
Biden for a lot of years. I knew his son Beau, who served in the National
Guard the same time that I did. I consider Joe Biden a friend. He is someone over the years that I've talked to and shared laughs with and spent time with in
different situations. The positive characteristics that drew me to Joe Biden of the past, they are not represented in
how he has led as President. And, you know, I'll let the pundits theorize as to how that is or why that is. But the truth that I know exists, which points to his weakness is that instead of listening
to his better angels, he has instead at every turn, if you go back and you, you know, I look back to his inauguration speech where he promised to be a
president for all Americans. And, you know, during his campaign promise
to be the uniter in chief, to bring a country together
that was deeply divided, that's the Joe Biden that
I've known for many years, a guy who has, you know, worked with different people with different backgrounds
and different political views, but tried to find at
different points in time a way to work together. At every turn, he has done the exact opposite of what he spoke about during
his inauguration speech, and has left us as the American
people today more divided, less secure, both from
an economic standpoint, as well as a national security or a safety and security standpoint, and less free as a
society and as a people. - So the biggest criticism
would be he divided us or continued the division
that's been there. Who do you be the greatest uniter? Like to me, over the past
few decades, to me, Obama. You've been very critical of Obama on the foreign policy side on many fronts, but to me, that guy did really good. Maybe some people say just rhetoric, but I think rhetoric matters
when you're president. I think he was, out of all the presidents we had was probably the most
effective uniter of the people. Would that be fair to say? - During his 2008 campaign, yes. I think that his message resonated with so many people across generations and across, you know, different views, different backgrounds to where, you know, people cried on the
night that he was elected because they felt so hopeful. I talked to people and I know people who set aside their entire
lives to work on his campaign to be a part of this
hope and change mission that he laid out that
would bring us together. You know, some of the people
that I know personally, they gave up their lives
during the campaign and after he won they
went to Washington, D.C. because they wanted to be able to do the work that he had laid out and continued to be a part of this mission that they expected would
extend beyond the campaign. And they've expressed to me personally how heartbroken they were because so quickly after he was elected, instead of bringing in a new
generation of fresh leadership that was not a part of the
Washington establishment, he instead immediately chose
to surround himself with people who were more of the same old, same old, who were essentially part of the problem. And many of his actions after that proved that fear and
that brokenheartedness that they felt to be true. And I'll mention one example related to civil liberties that we talked about. He was someone as a U.S. senator who gave some pretty powerful
speeches on the Senate floor about his concerns with the Patriot Act, his concerns with surveillance from NSA, his concerns with a violation of our Fourth Amendment
rights and civil liberties. But when as president, he was confronted with leaked information about this surveillance occurring under those authorities in his presidency, he took this side of the
national security state and did not take action
to right the wrongs that he correctly pointed out as senator and during his campaign
for the presidency, which is unfortunate
because he really did build this unifying momentum
throughout his campaign. - What do you think that is? Why is it so hard as a
president to kinda act on the promises of the
campaign, but also just, I mean, his speech is
basically anti-war speech that really resonated to me, the fact that he was against the war in Iraq, I believe early-
- Yes, yes. - early on. - And that was a huge point of distinction between him and Hillary Clinton, probably one of the biggest. - Why is it so hard when you step into the Office of President
to sort of act on your ideals? - I think it goes back to what we talked about a little bit, which is, you know, what are you driven by and
what are you afraid of, and if you are concerned for whether or not you can get reelected, who's going to fund
that reelection effort, who's going to fund the
presidential library and your legacy that will follow? There have been some documented examples around how he promised to
crack down on big pharma, but when push came to shove, his Department of Justice
campaign funding was threatened and they chose not to take action even when they had a very,
very strong case to make. This was with regard to the
opioid crisis in the country. And you know, this just goes back to the heart of why it's so essential
that we have leaders who have courage and who are focused on doing what we elect them to do. - And who are resistant to
the love of money and power. - [Tulsi] Yes. - It's hard. - And we are human, we are fallible, we are flawed by nature. And I'll go into kind of the
next one you asked about Trump, the weakness side and the lessons that I
hope have been learned from 2016 for him and his team is you have to be in a position where you are surrounding yourselves with other people of courage who aren't just thinking
about their next political job or their next job, getting a cable news contract
or looking for fame themselves or looking at how they can
monetize their position for whatever their next
financial interest might be. But people of courage who
know what they're up against to really seriously clean house across the federal government
and the corruption and rot that is so deeply entrenched
in order to truly be effective. And if he is reelected, that is my hope that he's learned from
what went wrong in 2016, that, you know, he went in, you know, with a largely non-interventionist, more focused on peace agenda, and yet he surrounded himself with people who are at the heart of the
warmongers in Washington, and who directly went against the policies that he advocated for. On the strength side, I think it's easy to point out because it's also what has caused him to be so attacked in ways
that we haven't seen before, certainly not in my lifetime by the Democrats, by the
Biden administration. Not only in now, but you know, something that started back in
2016 when he was a candidate. He's a guy who, you know, by all measures has been
successful in his own life. And because of that, he's not coming in with this
desire to please Washington, that many other politicians have. And because he is so willing to challenge the, quote, unquote, "norms," and these are not norms
that serve the interests of the American people, these are norms that serve the interests of the most powerful,
he is a direct threat. And so that attitude and that mindset of not coming in with the kind of caution that too many politicians come in with, of wanting to be the
popular one at the parties or whatever it is that they want, that that is the strength that he brings. - Yeah, I just had a
conversation with Dana White and he's good friends with Trump, and he talks to the fact that he seems to be resistant to the attacks. Something aspect of that
is it's just the psychology of being able to withstand their attacks that are there in the political game and that can break people. Like you just don't want the headaches. So to withstand the attacks is tough. And something about his
psychology allows for that. I mean, I guess a question for you also, in your own psychology, you've
been attacked quite a bit. We've mentioned some of that
sort of misrepresentations and how do you deal with that by yourself? Like how do you not become cynical or overcompensate the other
direction, that kind of stuff? - It really stems from having
a clear sense of purpose. I never saw... You know, I've served in state government, I've served on our city
council in Honolulu and served in Congress, but at no time have I seen this as a, quote, unquote, "political career." I don't have that ladder-climbing ambition that a lot of politicians have. My sense of purpose is deeply
rooted in my dedication and my desire in my life
to be pleasing to God and to live a life of service. And what better way to be
pleasing to God than to try to do my best to work for the
well-being of God's children. Being rooted in that has made it so that as the attacks are
coming from different directions, even as people who I was friends with, former colleagues of mine,
others, even family members, even as they have turned away or become attackers against me themselves because of different
reasons related to politics, of course, it's a sad thing, especially when it's someone
that you know, you know, personally and have had
a personal friendship, a relationship with. But I don't live my life
trying to please politicians or please the people who
show up on TV or anyone else. As long as I am doing my
best to be pleasing to God, that is where I draw my happiness from, and my fulfillment and
contentment and strength. - So you spoken about the value of religious faith in your
life, of your Hindu faith, and seeing the Bhagavad
Gita as a spiritual guide. So what role does faith
in God play in your life? - It's everything. It is central to who I am, what inspires me, what motivates me, where I find strength, where I find peace, where I find shelter and
where I find happiness. And this has been a constant throughout, you know, times of challenge, times of darkness, times of heartbreak, times of happiness in always feeling very secure in knowing that God's
unconditional love is ever present. And no matter what else
is happening in my life, that God is my best friend and remaining centered and grounded in always remembering that
and meditating upon that truth is, it's everything to me. - The interesting thing about
the Hindu God is how welcoming the religion is of other religions, just- - [Tulsi] It's true. - how accepting it is. So in that way, in many ways, it's one of the most
beautiful religions on earth. So like who do you think God is to you? Like in the specifically the texts,
but also you personally, what does he represent? So for Hinduism, it's
also God can be many. There's also like a aspect where it's like a part of all of us? There's like a uniting thing, not a singular figure outside of us? - I think one of the things that's most commonly
misunderstood about Hinduism that people don't know is that, that Hinduism is truly
a monotheistic religion. That there is one God, and he goes by many names that describe his different
qualities and characteristics. And as you pointed out,
Hinduism is uniquely of a non-sectarian spiritual
practice, essentially. It's not a, quote, unquote, "religion" that you convert into or you leave behind or whatever the case may be. Bhagavad Gita, a central scripture in
text that comes from India, literally means "Song of God." And the principles that are conveyed throughout the Bhagavad Gita
are applicable to all of us. They are timeless truths that whether you consider
yourself Christian, or Catholic, or, you know,
Muslim, or Jewish, or Hindu, these truths are eternal and
relevant through all time. So for us as as kids growing up, we learned from and had bedtime stories that came from both the Bhagavad
Gita and the New Testament. My dad was raised Catholic, my
mom was raised Episcopalian, and both of them were
attracted to the Bhagavad Gita as they were in their own lives, searching for a more personal
relationship with God than they had been able to find elsewhere in their own spiritual journeys. And that's where the
application of, you know, there are teachings in the
Bhagavad Gita, for example, that talk about Bhakti Yoga. Bhakti Yoga essentially translates into dedicating your life, striving to develop a loving
relationship with God. Karma yoga, there's a chapter in the Bhagavad Gita that speaks about karma. Yoga karma is a word that
has become a part of the, you know, both karma and yoga
have become very common terms. But what it really means is trying to dedicate your actions in life in a way that have a
positive impact on others, being of service to others. And so for me, growing up, I never really understood as a
kid the idea of sectarianism, of one religion battling against another because I knew and
understood and experienced that the real meaning of
religion was love for God. No matter what name you worship
him by or how you worship, that is the real meaning of religion and the application of
that in your life is, you know, you ask, how do I
see God in a personal way? I see, I know that God is my best friend, God is my confidant. When I am struggling with a
problem in my life or, you know, during those quiet moments by myself where I am anxious or I'm sad, I turn to God for that solace, for that clarity, for that strength to both know
what the right thing to do is and the strength to act accordingly and to constantly strive
to further develop that very personal, loving
relationship with God. - Tulsi, this is an honor to finally
meet you, to talk to you. This was amazing. Thank you. - Thank you, Lex. It's
so wonderful to be here. Thank you for the opportunity. - Thanks for listening
to this conversation with Tulsi Gabbard. To support this podcast, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some
words from Dwight D. Eisenhower in his 1961 farewell address. "A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty,
ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk
his own destruction. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required,
make swords as well. But now we can no longer
risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. This conjunction of immense
military establishment and a large arms industry is
new in the American experience. Yet we must not fail to
comprehend its grave implications. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,
whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power
exists and will persist." Thank you for listening and
hope to see you next time.