Hillary Clinton\u2019s suggestion this past week that Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is being \u201cgroomed\u201d by Russians to act as a spoiler in the 2020 race may have had the opposite effect of what the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee intended: It\u2019s elevated Gabbard\u2019s candidacy and may have inspired even more ardent interest in her campaign among Clinton critics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Saturday, Gabbard found fans among the many Clinton skeptics across Iowa, where Clinton barely won the 2016 Democratic caucuses against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gabbard responded that \u201cit revealed the truth that I have been experiencing for a long time now which is that, because I have been trying to bring about an end to our country\u2019s long-held foreign policy of waging one regime-change war after the next . I am labeled as a traitor.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gabbard\u2019s longshot campaign came under scrutiny this past week after Clinton appeared on a podcast where she did not mention the Hawaii congresswoman by name, but said she believes the Russians have \u201cgot their eye on somebody who\u2019s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third party candidate.\u201d There was no mistaking whom she meant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gabbard\u2019s campaign has been promoted by Russian state-owned media and a number of alt-right websites and defended on Twitter by the Russian Embassy. She\u2019s previously faced controversy and criticism from leaders in her party for her unorthodox foreign policy positions, like her decision to meet Syrian President Bashar Assad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On Friday and Saturday, Gabbard refused to disavow the support she\u2019s seen from Russian actors and alt-right sites. But she repeatedly said she will not run as an independent or third-party candidate if she doesn\u2019t win the Democratic nomination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And Gabbard encountered supporters across eastern Iowa on Saturday. During a campaign stop in Iowa City at a University of Iowa tailgate, a man came up to give Gabbard a ushanka-style yellow Hawkeye hat.\u201cIt\u2019s a Russian hat!\u201d Gabbard said with a laugh, before hugging the man and taking a picture with him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hillary Clinton\u2019s suggestion this past week that Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is being \u201cgroomed\u201d by Russians to act as a spoiler in the 2020 race may have had the opposite effect of what the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee intended: It\u2019s elevated Gabbard\u2019s candidacy and may have inspired even more ardent interest in her campaign among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72788,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72787"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72787\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72789,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72787\/revisions\/72789"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}