Tulsi Gabbard Blasts ‘McCarthyist Witch Hunt’ Against Her as Threat to Nation

May 21, 2019 (EIRNS)—Democratic Presidential pre-candidate Tulsi Gabbard slammed a recent hit job by the Daily Beast news site against her as the kind of dangerous mainstream media McCarthyism which “makes it easier to push our country into war.”

The Daily Beast attacked Gabbard for “deviating from her party’s mainstream” by being “Russia-friendly” (“Tulsi Gabbard’s Campaign Is Being Boosted by Putin Apologists,” May 17, 2019). Proof offered? That she has received contributions from “some of the nation’s leading Russophiles,” most prominently Prof. Stephen Cohen, “arguably the nation’s leading intellectual apologist for Russian President Vladimir Putin.” The Daily Beast also cites as proof of her Russian tendencies, her downplaying the Mueller Report (“time to move on”), opposing intervention into Syria, Iran, etc., and, yes, being interviewed by pro-Trump media sites.

Gabbard’s campaign email response identifies the broader strategic issue behind this attack on her:

“The Daily Beast is really scraping the bottom of the barrel in their attempts to get Tulsi. They combed through our donor records looking for Russian support for our campaign. Despite only turning up $6,000 in donations from three people who fit their invented profile, they just published a hit piece claiming our campaign is being underwritten by some of the nation’s leading Russian sympathizers.

“This hit piece is an example of the kind of McCarthyist witch hunt made possible by the mainstream media’s role in fomenting the new Cold War with Russia. It stirs up hysteria that makes it easier to push our country into war. It paints patriotic Americans as foreign agents and so-called apologists for foreign leaders. And it pushes us to sacrifice our hard-won civil liberties at the altar of war.

“It’s exactly the kind of war mongering that Tulsi is speaking out against. And it’s her outspokenness against our failed interventionist foreign policy that’s making her a target.”