Former Democratic Party presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard announced that she was leaving the organisation and accused it of being an “elitist cabal of warmongers”. 

Gabbard’s exit from the party comes after her 2020 presidential bid failed. She retired from the House of Representatives in 2021. Since then, Gabbard has been increasingly critical of the Democratic Party, particularly towards president Joe Biden. In addition, she has taken conservative positions regarding issues such as abortion and transgender rights. She has also appeared as a speaker at the Conservative Political Action Committee this year. 

Gabbard’s 2020 presidential campaign

Gabbard announced her bid for the US president’s office in February 2019. By announcing her 2020 presidential campaign, she became the first female combat veteran to run for office. Her campaign was described by CNN as being populist. 

After the first, second and fourth 2020 Democratic debates, Gabbard’s name became the most Googled candidate. Her absence from the third debate was because of her not being able to meet the polling threshold, something which she criticized as being not transparent. When she did appear for the fourth debate, she attacked the media and the Democratic Party and accused them of ‘rigging’ the election. 

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In July 2019, she became the only Democratic candidate to visit Puerto Rico and was part of a protest that urged governor Ricardo Rossello to resign. In October of that year, Hillary Clinton made remarks about Russia ‘grooming’ a female Democrat to run as a third-party candidate. While the media understood the reference to be Gabbard, it wasn’t explicitly revealed. The Hawaiian representative filed a defamation lawsuit against Clinton in January 2020 but dropped it five months later. 

In March that year, Gabbard announced that she would be resigning from the presidential race and that she would support Joe Biden’s nomination. In a video, she said that it was “clear that Democratic Primary voters have chosen Vice President Joe Biden to be the person who will take on President Trump in the general election.”