Tulsi Gabbard to Breitbart News: Democrats ‘Certainly Not’ Anti-war Anymore

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) told Breitbart News on Thursday morning that Democrats no longer deserved to be called an “anti-war” party, because they simply opposed everything that President Donald Trump had done.

Gabbard joined Breitbart News Daily on Sirius XM Patriot 125 for a live interview with Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow, who asked her if Democrats still deserved to be known as an “anti-war” party. She said they did not. Certainly, not anymore,” she said.

“Rather than actually standing up for the best interest of our country, standing up for the best interest of our people and for peace, decisions are made and criticisms are levied based on, well, if it’s a president from the other party, then we’re going to stand up against everything they do. And this is something we see on both sides of the aisle,” she said.

That is not to say Gabbard approved of President Trump’s withdrawal of troops from Syria. She accused him of violating his promise to pull out of the country, saying that he was simply “moving from one part of Syria to another part of Syria.”

That, she continued, was allowing Turkey to begin “ethnic cleansing and slaughter” of the Kurds. Moreover, she said, President Trump’s open policy of controlling oil facilities in Syria smacked of “naked imperialism.”

She also opposed sanctions on the Syrian regime, because the victims of those sanctions were the Syrian people, she said.

Gabbard said the U.S. should use special forces to attack terrorist groups in Syria when necessary, but then leave, rather than waging what she called “regime change war.”

Marlow asked Gabbard about criticisms of her 2017 meeting with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. She said she had brought up the issue of free and fair elections in the country, and that he had agreed, in principle.

Asked about Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Gabbard said there were still disputes as to whether the attacks that had prompted American military action had actually happened.

She opposed U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia, and said the U.S. should return to the Iran nuclear deal, which she said would help stop that country from building nuclear weapons.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He earned an A.B. in Social Studies and Environmental Science and Public Policy from Harvard College, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.