Tulsi Gabbard and her alt-right guru/puppet master

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Report is originally from the Washington Post, but you know...pay-wall...

Has Tulsi Gabbard Been the Weird Little Puppet of an Alt-Right Religious Guru Her Entire Political Career?

One of the problems of growing up in a dizzy cult is, one day, Daddy gets fired because he blew the leader’s breakfast order. From The Washington Post:

Among [Chris] Butler’s disciples were Mike and Carol Gabbard, who moved to Hawaii in the early 1980s with their children, including young Tulsi. Mike Gabbard for a time also oversaw Butler’s personal affairs—until he was fired for lapses that included failing to ensure a supply of fresh mangoes for Butler’s breakfasts, according to an internal SIF memo.

Our week begins with a whopper of a story about Tulsi Gabbard and a guru named Chris Butler who may have directed her entire public career according to his weird improv Krishnaism. Rumors about Gabbard and her ties to Butler’s bizarre precepts swirled around her during her time as a member of Congress, during her abortive presidential run in 2020, and throughout her erratic journey that ended up with her becoming this administration’s director of national intelligence. Jon Swaine of the Post worked one Rebecca Saltzburg, a former member of Butler’s Science of Identity Foundation until Saltzburg grew disenchanted with Butler’s cult, and she gifted the reporter with reams of documents that prove, among other things, that Tulsi Gabbard should have been kept at least half a continent away from national intelligence information at all costs.

The rest of the quotations are Esquire's snippets from the NYT article:

Dozens of attached memos appeared to document directives and advice for Gabbard from her time in Congress. Some contained instructions on what legislation she should propose, which policies she should embrace and how she should conduct herself on television. They had an air of authority. A memo about a proposal to partition war-torn Iraq into three states quoted an unnamed person as saying it was “time for TG to come up with this idea.” Some of the language was harshly critical.

I compared the content of the memos against Gabbard’s record in the House and I found unmistakable parallels. The main speaker in a 2014 memo pressed for her to propose legislation penalizing countries with citizens who had fought for the Islamic State, and to issue a statement about it. “Get it started in the morning,” the person said. “You need to be the leader in this regard. Don’t dick around.” I found that Gabbard released a statement the following day. A week after that, she introduced a bill in the House.

An October 12, 2015, memo labeled “CNN Wolf Blitzer Talking points (Final)” contained this language about reports that she had been asked by Democratic leadership not to attend a presidential debate: “It’s not a ‘boohoo, I don’t get to go to the party’ situation, Wolf.” I dug up the clip of her appearance that day and found that she had used the line almost verbatim: “The issue here is not about me saying boo-hoo, I’m going to miss the party.”

The limited remarks attributed to Gabbard in the memos appeared to show her enthusiastically embracing the guidance. “TG: That’s perfect, that line right there,” said one transcript labeled “Iraq notes—call.” A line attributed to “TG” in another transcript said, “That’s a great way to put it.”

This is fucking horrifying. Gabbard may no longer have the reigns over U.S. national security, but she held them for quite a while. If we had a normal, sane administration instead of the mushroom regime we have now, this would cause at least a dozen investigations to start up, looking into this guy and Gabbard's relationship to him.

 

[Beebo Brink]

Apparently the cult members would flood social media to defend Tulsi Gabbard and sing her praises. Which would explain some of what happened here on VVO a few years back....