This is who Gabbard is.
"
To understand her ambitions, her aunt Dr Carolina Sinavaiana Gabbard tells
The Independent in an interview that it is necessary to look to her upbringing in a secretive
cult called the Science of Identity Foundation (SIF) whose members show absolute loyalty to a reclusive guru, Chris Butler.
A former member told
The Independent the group’s teachings are virulently homophobic, often anti-Islamic and misogynist, and how they were forced to worship Butler, who is considered to be akin to a God.
Ms Savaiana Gabbard says her niece’s career is all about the pursuit of power, and her bid for the presidency in 2020 was the culmination of four decades of Butler’s efforts to seek political influence.
“Once again I find my niece’s apparent penchant for parroting extremist toadies such as Tucker Carlson and vile ‘strongmen’ such as Vladimir Putin, to be problematic and deeply troubling,” Ms Sianavaiana Gabbard, a retired professor of English at the University of Hawaii, told
The Independent.
“âIt gives me no pleasure to ânote that Tulsi’s single governing principle seems to be expedience, which is in effect no principle at all.”
Her pro-Kremlin talking points led to Russian state-TV introducing her as “Tulsi, our friend.”
After airing part of her Fox interview, a panelist asked: “Is she some kind of Russian agent?”
Gabbard went on to guest host Tucker Carlson’s show in August.
Gabbard’s political donations have also come under scrutiny over her pro-Russian positions.
Forbes revealed earlier this year that Gabbard’s biggest political donor in 2021 is a pro-Putin apologist.
And in March, it was revealed that Elena Branson, a dual US-Russian citizen accused of spying for the Kremlin,
donated to her campaign for reelection to Congress in 2019.
Gabbard has consistently echoed GOP positions on immigration and LGBT+ issues, and recently claimed that Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill was too moderate.
“When I first heard about Florida’s Parental Rights bill, I was shocked it only protects children K-3. Third grade? How about 12th grade—or not at all,” she said.
In 2015, she flew to Syria to meet with the dictator Bashar al-Assad as he was waging a brutal war against his own people.
She has courted Egyptian president Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, whose regime has killed and imprisoned thousands of subjects since assuming power in a coup in 2014.
And the authoritarian-leaning Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi sent a personal emissary to her 2015 wedding in Hawaii.
Oklahoma woman Robin Marshall, 40, who spent six months at a SIF retreat in Hawaii in the early 2000s, told
The Independent recruits were taught to be “highly homophobic”.
“They told us: ‘We don’t associate with f***s’,” using a homophobic slur.
“The hatred, the degrading language, it was just one thing after another.”
She was played recordings of Butler who she says espoused extreme homophobic views.
“They said he could read your mind. They were wholly and fully indoctrinated into this idea that Chris Butler was basically God.”
Ms Marshall says she was aware back then of Tulsi Gabbard as a rising star within the foundation. She said it was “inconceivable” that anyone involved with the group was not being directed by Butler.
“I feel like when you vote for somebody who is heavily tied into SOF, you’re not voting for that person, you’re voting for Chris Butler, as a servant of the servant of God.”
In 2019,
the Iowa Informer published an
investigation by freelance journalist Christine Gralow that reviewed Butler’s decades of teachings, including the many homophobic references he has made over the years.
In
a 2017 Medium post, a woman who has since left SIF described how she was taught that life was an “illusion”, and followers were instructed to only develop a relationship with Butler.
“We were in effect isolated from our parents who did their best to not love us as per his recommendation, and instead looked at him like a surrogate father/messiah figure.”
“What I am concerned about is the control I know Chris Butler has over her, the influence he has over her ability to make decisions, decisions that could become law and impact a whole lot of people,” describing him as an abusive, misogynistic, homophobic, germophobic, narcissistic nightmare.
When Gabbard ran for president in 2020, virtually her entire campaign staff were members of the Science of Identity, Ms Sinavaiana Gabbard told
The Independent.
The bottom line is that she is the one spreading hate. She is Moscow's favorite former legislator. She spreads Russian propaganda in this country. She is a treasonous traitor.