Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is taking advantage of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s attack against her in a recent podcast, with her campaign sending out fundraising emails encouraging Clinton to join the race for a third time and “face” Tulsi “directly.”
“Hillary Clinton accused Tulsi Gabbard – a combat veteran, soldier and Major in the Army National Guard – of being ‘groomed’ to be a ‘Russian asset,’ the email reads. “Tulsi fights back and demands Hillary join the race and face her directly.”
The email goes on to call Mrs. Clinton “the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long,” and says that with her attacks against Gabbard, she “finally came out from behind the curtain.”
“If this is a fight she wants to have, one that has implications for all of us and the future of our democracy, then I challenge her to come out from behind her proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media, and face me directly,” the email added, with the email encouraging a $25 donation to the congresswoman’s presidential campaign.
In an interview with CBS News Friday night, Gabbard elaborated, suggesting that Clinton and her “proxies” were “smearing” her and labeling her a Russian agent because Mrs. Clinton “knows she can’t control me. She knows that she’s not going to be able to manipulate me if I’m elected president to be able to continue these warmongering policies that she has championed.”
Stein Says Clinton's Attack Explains 2016 Loss
Dr. Jill Stein, the 2016 Green Party candidate who was among the long list of people Clinton blamed for her loss in a 2017 book, was similarly dismissive of Mrs. Clinton’s remarks, accusing the former first lady of giving in to “a completely unhinged conspiracy theory.”
“I am not a Russian spy. I think this is a completely unhinged conspiracy theory for which there is absolutely no basis in fact, not for myself and not for Tulsi Gabbard,” Stein said, speaking to CNN. “You know, you can’t just slander people. You have to present some basis in fact,” she added.
The former third party candidate also pointed out that she wasn’t even running in 2020, saying Mrs. Clinton didn’t seem to “do her Google research” when she made her claims. “You know, this is just a wild and insulting theory, and I think it speaks to Hillary’s need to explain, perhaps to herself, you know, why her campaign was not successful,” Stein concluded.
Stein continued her quarrel with Clinton online, telling her that “you can slander progressives as ‘Russian assets’, but you can’t hide the fact that the DNC sabotaged Sanders & elevated Trump to set the stage for HRC.” She challenged Clinton to a debate, writing that it was “past time to give the American people the real debate they deserved in 2016, but were denied by the phony DNC/RNC-controlled Commission on Presidential Debates.”
"Russian Assets"
Clinton, who lost the Democratic primary to Illinois Senator Barrack Obama in 2008, and the presidential election to real estate mogul Donald Trump in 2016, sparked a firestorm of debate on Friday after telling former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe that she believed Tulsi Gabbard was being “groomed” by the Republican Party, and that Stein was “also a Russian asset.”
Clinton’s comments and Gabbard and Stein’s response to them spread like wildfire on social media and became top ten global trends for hours Friday night and into Saturday.
Stein’s Green Party took just over 1 percent of the vote in the 2016 election, coming fourth behind Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson. A recent Economist/YouGov survey has Gabbard polling at 3 percent for the Democratic nomination, behind former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Senator Bernie Sanders, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Senator Kamala Harris. But Drudge Report online poll had Gabbard leading the field of Democratic candidates in recent debate performance, with some 40.16 percent of those polled saying she won Tuesday night’s debate.
*CORRECTION: The text of this article has been amended slightly to reflect the fact that Mrs. Clinton was apparently referring to the Republican Party, not “the Russians,” when she mentioned that someone was “grooming” a third-party candidate for the 2020 race.