Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic presidential candidate, has declared that she is no longer a Democrat in response to persistent rumours regarding her political affiliation.

The former senator from the Democratic Party announced on Tuesday that she was leaving the group that she had tried to lead as president but was ultimately defeated by Joe Biden for the 2020 nomination.

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In words resembling Republican attack lines on Biden, Gabbard released a long statement on Tuesday criticising what she has called “an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.”

Gabbard listed the US president’s border policy, Democratic “ideology,” as well as purported animosity “to people of faith & spirituality” and the claimed demonization of “the police” as the reasons for her resignation.

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However, Biden, a practising Catholic, has frequently stated his support for law enforcement, particularly in light of the attack on the US Capitol on January 6 by Trump supporters.

The current Democratic party, according to Gabbard, “weaponise the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, dragging us ever closer to nuclear war,” she concluded.

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These comments appeared to be in response to Republican criticism of the Justice Department’s investigation into the handling of sensitive papers by former US president Donald Trump as well as the US’s backing for Ukraine in its conflict with Russia.

Many Democrats and political pundits responded to the news on Twitter on Tuesday morning by expressing their lack of astonishment at the former senator’s resignation.

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The former presidential candidate called Gabbard’s criticism of Republican attacks on democracy a type of “authoritarian” control intended “to intimidate people who oppose him politically into silence.” Gabbard has long criticised Biden and the Democratic Party as a whole.