The Chris Cuomo Project - Tulsi Gabbard (Cuomo Extra)

Episode Date: October 16, 2022

In this special extra from NewsNation’s “Cuomo,” former U.S. representative Tulsi Gabbard joins Chris to discuss her decision to leave the Democratic Party, the potential for the conflict in Ukraine to lead to nuclear war, and more. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Former Hawaii Congresswoman, Democratic Party presidential candidate, one-time rising star in that party, Tulsi Gabbard, announced two days ago she's done with the Dems and now she's here with us. Thank you for taking the opportunity. Thank you. It's great to see you, Chris. Feel strong about the decision? Any regrets? None at all. What has been the decision? Any regrets? None at all. What has been the reaction? It's been a mixed reaction. I've gotten a lot of hate coming from some places I expected it to come from. But the thing that's been most heartening is hearing from Americans across the country,

some Democrats, independents, some Republicans, a lot of people who felt deeply moved, who felt like I was bringing voice to concerns that they were feeling in a really visceral way, but too afraid in this cancel culture to speak up and to say anything about it. And that's where I see opportunity for us as a country to be able to step up, speak the truth, exercise our freedoms, our right to free speech, independent thought, freedom of religion, the things God-given rights that are enshrined in our constitution. We've got to get back to that foundation for us to have hope to move forward as a country. Sounds like a strong message, but you need an organization. Where do you go now? Do you become a Republican? I'm an independent and I will continue using whatever

platform I have to bring common sense, truth, and again, this voice for freedom, and frankly, this voice for peace here to the public marketplace of ideas, because it's lacking in a lot of ways, especially in political circles. What about elected office? I have no plans to run right now. Right now? But right now you're sitting at a plastic table with me. What about in a month, two months? Here's the thing, though. The existential threat we face right now in this country is the threat of nuclear war. So for me to answer that question, well, what are you going to do in the next election? I can't even think that far ahead because we have people talking very

carelessly about, well, we'll use tactical nukes here. We can go to nuclear war as though they forget what Ronald Reagan said, that a nuclear war cannot be won and should never be fought. They forget what JFK said, that pursuing a path of nuclear war is a collective death wish for all of humanity. These are the things that are most important for our leaders to focus on. This is the thing that I'm focused on, because if we don't deal with this now, if we don't hold our leaders to account to do their job, President Biden, Congress, de-escalate these tensions, negotiate a peaceful settlement to this ongoing escalation of war that we are seeing, we won't have this conversation in a month because society will be finished. The world will end as we know it.

Let's hope that we know we're close to that and that Russia is the one doing the saber rattling, not the United States. Let me just close the circle on this. You said right now I'm independent. Does that mean you will never become a Republican? I don't say never to anything. I'm focused on fighting for peace and fighting for making sure that we have a tomorrow. Would you consider joining the forward party, the new third party? I don't know enough about it, to be honest. Would you consider any other party? I'm focused on here and now today.

So let's talk here and now. Isn't the case, and you know, you've known me for a while. You've been hit over the head with this stick of you're a Russia sympathizer, you're a Russian plant. I think even Hillary Clinton said something like that once. She did. These are silly games. OK, what am I missing? Russia goes into Ukraine unprovoked, OK, has no color of authority.

They are now saying we may use nuclear tactics because they're getting beat on the ground. Why isn't it on them to leave? Why isn't any negotiation predicated on they're leaving a place they have no right to have entered? The president of the United States has a responsibility, the first and foremost responsibility to keep us safe and to keep us free. So far, what we've seen is our president giving up our sovereignty, our safety, our security, and frankly, our future, saying, well, this is up to Putin. He's just going to sit on the sidelines and wait and see what Putin does. Are you kidding me?

So do you think we should be more involved in Ukraine? We should. Our president needs to step up and bring the stakeholders around the table to have a negotiated end to this war that has been escalating ever since Putin invaded Ukraine back in February. That's what a leader would do. That's what President JFK would do. That's what Ronald Reagan would do. Assuming he was invited to do so. Technically, they're not NATO. We have no right to say we'll negotiate. If you look at what the reports were when representatives from Russia and Ukraine were actually negotiating all the way back in March. It was the United States that was coming in and saying, hey, no, don't make a deal

here. Don't make a deal. Hold out. We'll continue to support you. Well, Zelensky says no deal unless they leave. Zelensky has been very clear. His people, the consensus is not very clear. There was a time early on where both Russia and Ukraine were saying, hey, we need to have a conversation. It was the President of the United States and maybe others in NATO who were telling them, leave the negotiation table. Every single American should be pissed off about that because who has suffered the most? The people of Ukraine have suffered the most. And people here in the United States are continuing to struggle and wonder, what the hell are we doing here? But a lot of people also ask. I mean, I have this guy coming up on the show who went over there to help and help them in the field.

He wound up being captured by the Russians and tortured for 100 days. They're doing bad things. There's no question about that. Why isn't the move for us to do more to help Ukraine push them back so that Russia feels like it has to negotiate? Where this continues to go is what we've seen already, is a continued escalation. And if it continues to escalate, we already know because he's talking about it. The only place this goes is an eventual nuclear war or World War III. Both of those outcomes are terribly devastating, potentially catastrophic for the people of this country and the people of the world. That's where the president of the United States needs to step up and do what is necessary, do his job to ensure our safety and our security.

That's abroad. Here at home, January 6th, the committee today voted and said the former president should come in and testify. What do you think of the decision? I haven't tracked the news today on this. I think you look at- I just gave it to you. You look at what January 6th commission has been about from the very beginning. They stated their outcome and pretended to do an investigation to find evidence to support that outcome. Bring President Trump in. Is that really going to change anything?

No, because they decided the outcome of that commission on day one, completely biased, no sincere effort to say, hey, let's actually find the facts and see where this goes. So I think like a lot of Americans, they're looking at this as political theater, a way for Democrats to try to win votes before the election. I'll agree with you with the last part is that the American people are obviously fatigued because you have a majority that don't see themselves as very left or very right. And they're watching what seems to be fringe warfare. But you've had a lot of Republicans come up and testify in ways that show suggestions of not only was the president not going to accept the outcome of the election, but in advance even of the election, and that there were concerns about who knew what about who was going to come

and how angry they would be. These are legitimate questions about what happened. They're legitimate questions. Here's my question for you, though. But doesn't he have answers that we won't get out of him? Here's my question for you is, has there been a single person brought before that committee to testify in public with another view, another experience? What's the other side of the story? That's been my question. I've seen all these reports come out. It's been a very one-sided presentation.

What would be the other side? I don't know. I'm sure there's another, there's another side to every story though, isn't there? There is another perspective. They have not, they have not brought forward or made any attempt to have an unbiased view from the beginning of this. But who, who would that be? I mean, you, you, you're doing this investigation. There are a lot of people involved here. But I'm saying you get people around the president and what happened. You get the guys who were taken down that day for going there. Isn't that how you find out what happened? You find the people who were about it and have they brought forward all the people about it? Because if you look on TV, you listen to the radio, you look online. There are a lot of other voices and people in those rooms. And I'm not look, I don't I don't take one side or the other.

But when you put forward a commission in Congress, that the members of that commission should be unbiased and coming in objective. That was not the case. They brought in Republicans who they already knew agreed with the Democrat position was we got to come and take down Trump. Instead of actually saying, hey, let's bring forward people who can come at this independently, bring forward witnesses who can come at this independently and follow the facts. They stated the outcome of this in the very beginning and have not made any attempts to try to hide that. How does this play at home? Hawaii is pretty Democrat. And, you know, I mean, you look at it any metric, I don't have to tell you. This is not a state known for people going

bad on the party. How does it play at home and why does that not matter to you? My loyalty is to this country and I've not made my decisions throughout any of my time in public service or in my life trying to please one group of people or another. And I think that's one thing that a lot of my constituents in Hawaii, regardless of political party, have expressed to me they've appreciated about my time representing them in Congress is that I didn't go in blindly saying, hey, I'm only on this team. Forget everybody else who's not part of that team. It's really looking at things on their substance and what's in the best interest of the people of Hawaii and this country. And that's what I'm

continuing to do. Look, you know, I got to give it to you. It was not easy to do what you did. Now, I'm not really surprised by it because you have been finding yourself at odds with the party considerably. You were once part of their young leadership. You dropped out of the presidential race. You endorsed Biden. But you had been increasingly critical. How long have you been considering doing this? Honestly, I haven't put a timeline on it, but I would say over the last couple of years, Ah, honestly, I haven't put a timeline on it, but I would say over the last couple of years, especially things have become things have led to a point where today's Democratic Party is really led by fanatical ideologues who oppose freedom, who if you express a view that is different from theirs on any given day, not only they can't just say, hey, we can agree to disagree. We used to be a big tent, inclusive party, welcoming people of different views. Now that is not the case. They will seek to destroy you, silence you, and smear your character.

They say we're fighting against the other side that wants to destroy democracy. And we can't tolerate that. And we have to enforce decency. We have to force the constitution and they're not even propositions. Unfortunately, when they say those words, their actions tell the opposite story. Say, well, we need to protect democracy and enforce the constitution, but we don't agree in any speech that we don't like. We need to shut down voices that don't agree with ours, directly undermining the Constitution, the concept of freedom of speech. You look at the ACLU as an example. Used to be, they would defend free speech, even if it was the most horrible, horrible speech. They stood up for

free speech. Now they changed their rules on their website saying, we will defend free speech that are aligned with our values. It's been a complete turnaround. And that's what we've seen, unfortunately, that the so-called woke Democratic Party leaders are representing. And it is a threat to our democracy when you cannot stand for freedom and when you have people in power with the force of law and the force of all the arms and muscle of law standing behind that. That's the thing that ultimately I can't align with. Tulsi Gabbard, I look forward to seeing what happens next. You're always welcome at this table to talk about what matters. I appreciate you taking the opportunity.