Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) further elaborated on her decision to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for president.
“This had nothing to do with the DNC or DNC politics,” Gabbard said. “This had everything to do with my decision that I could no longer stand on the sidelines as elections are taking place to determine who our potential next commander in chief could be. As a soldier and as a veteran this is incredibly personal and it’s incredibly important because I think this is the most important job of a president is to be our commander in chief. There’s a very clear contrast and clear difference when it comes to our two Democratic candidates and who will exercise good judgment, who will stop us from continuing these interventionist regime change wars that we’ve seen in Iraq and Libya and now in Syria that have cost our country so much in terms of American lives, trillions and trillions of dollars, what to speak of the hundreds of thousands of lives in the Middle East that have been lost to this and the impact on our economy here at home. Bernie Sanders is that candidate who will not take us, service members and our country, into these interventionist wars and Hillary Clinton, through her record, has proven that she will continue that and that’s what’s important to me and I think it’s important for our voters to know before they go and head to the polls tomorrow and into the coming weeks.”
Gabbard also doubled down on her belief that there should have been more debates, a position she held before resigning as a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee.
“As vice chair of the DNC, as you know, I came out and felt there should be more debates,” she added. “There should be more conversations and that our presidential candidates should not be punished for going out and engaging in these conversations with the American people in cities and towns across the country. We’ve seen that there have been more debates, there have been more forums, which I think is healthy, but really, I think, there still has not been a focus — there has not been a clear conversation about the contrast between our two candidates when it comes to this question of war and peace. I was home last weekend in Hawaii doing my monthly Army National Guard training and ran into a few friends who I had deployed with to Iraq in 2005 and heard some very difficult stories about the challenges they have gone through for over a decade now that we’ve been home from that deployment and they’re only just now starting to crawl out of this dark hole because of these invisible wounds that are yet another symptom of these costs of war. So this is why I resigned from the DNC. This is why I’m supporting Senator Bernie Sanders, because there is far too much at stake here and I want to make sure that people know who they’re voting for in the coming days and what the impacts of those votes will be.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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