Tulsi Gabbard continues her far-right metamorphosis with CPAC appearance — and defense of Putin’s Ukraine war

Although former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard was among the many candidates in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary and served as vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, she has been quick to echo MAGA talking points during the Biden era — and she will be among the speakers at the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Journalist Molly Sprayregen takes a look at the former Hawaii congresswoman’s willingness to pander to the far right in an article published by LGBTQ Nation on February 22, explaining, “While Gabbard did represent Hawaii as a Democrat and also ran for president as one, she has increasingly moved to the right. Lately, she’s been touting deeply Republican rhetoric, blasting Biden for playing ‘identity politics’ in his commitment to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court and calling critics of anti-LGBTQ conservative podcaster Joe Rogan ‘zealots of wokeism.’”

In a February 23 tweet, Gabbard sounded very MAGA when she defended Russian President Vladimir Putin, saying that Putin has "legitimate security concerns" with Ukraine:

Gabbard, Sprayregen notes, once described former President Donald Trump as “unfit to serve.” And she endorsed Biden after dropping out of the Democratic presidential primary in 2020. But CPAC 2022 will be full of buffoonish MAGA themes, including “Fire Fauci” and “Obamacare Still Kills.” Even during a deadly pandemic that has caused more than 5.9 million fatalities worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MAGA Republicans continue to be obsessed with abolishing the Affordable Care Act of 2021, a.k.a. Obamacare, and taking health care away from millions of Americans.

“Gabbard also has a long anti-LGBTQ past,” Sprayregen observes. “Before she was elected to Congress, she worked for one of her father’s anti-LGBTQ organizations, the Alliance for Traditional Marriage, which she later cited as a positive experience when she ran for the state legislature in 2002. When asked about this, she said that she personally never supported conversion therapy — and in early 2019, she made a video apologizing for her anti-LGBTQ past. She said that her views had changed, but she was still accusing Democrats of ‘fomenting religious bigotry’ for saying that Christian judges should not impose their religious beliefs on others.”

Gabbard, now 40, is a veteran of Hawaii politics. After serving in the Hawaii House of Representatives in the early 2000s, she served on the Honolulu City Council in 2011 and 2012 before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012 and taking over a seat formerly held by now-Sen. Mazie Hirono — a Democrat with a much more liberal track record than Gabbard and a scathing critic of Trump.