Tulsi Gabbard

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome former Congresswoman, Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserves and host of the Tulsi Gabbard Show, Tulsi Gabbard. Thank you so much. It's great to see all of you here today. Great to be among you. We are facing great challenges in our country. For me, 20 years ago, I joined the Democratic Party because I was inspired by Democrats who took a stand for peace, who protested against the Vietnam War. I was inspired by leaders in my home state of Hawaii who fought for plantation workers who were being abused and exploited by their wealthy landowners. I was inspired by leaders like Martin Luther King, JFK, and I was drawn to the ideals of the Democratic Party at that time that welcomed all people from different backgrounds and views that stood up and fought for working men and women, fought for the little guy, and that actually took a stand for free speech, for civil liberties. As I stand here before you today, I am no longer a Democrat because I could not in good conscience remain in a party that's under the complete control of an elitist cabal of war mongers, led by the queen of war mongers herself, Hillary Clinton, and embodied by President Joe Biden today, leaders who are driven by cowardly wokeness. I love this country and have taken an oath twice to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, both as a soldier who enlisted because of the terrorist attacks on 9-11, as well as as a member of Congress where I served for eight years on the Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees. Today's Democratic Party is actively working to undermine our God-given rights and freedoms enshrined in the Constitution. Fostering diversity of thought and freedom of expression is the foundation of any flourishing democracy. Democratic Party leaders disagree. They are led by fanatical ideologues. I think many of you have been exposed to them who pose a threat to our democracy because they don't believe in freedom. They don't believe in freedom of speech or freedom of thought or freedom of religion. They don't believe in the right that every one of us has as Americans to express ourselves without fear of retribution or retaliation from our government. They demand purism to whatever their agenda is of the day, and they try to censor speech that they don't like, and they label it as, well, this is misinformation, disinformation, so-called hate speech or violent speech, and we have to censor this speech to protect you. I know this has happened to me. It's probably happened to a lot of you, but in doing so, they are undermining our civil liberties, and they are abusing their power by taking authorities in things like the Patriot Act and using secret FISA courts to illegally surveil Americans, working hand-in-glove with their partners in the corporate media and in big tech, actively working to silence and smear those of us who dare to challenge their authority. How can a political party that is opposed to freedom be trusted with our democracy? They can't. Exactly. And we look at our Constitution, we recognize that our founders intentionally passed the Second Amendment right after the first. They recognized that every one of us has a right to defend ourselves and our loved ones, and that this right will serve as a check on the tyrannical government seeking to take away our God-given freedoms. There was a recent Supreme Court ruling that I felt stated very clearly and succinctly, quote, just as we do not need to seek a permit to stand on the street corner and exercise our right to free speech, we shouldn't have to seek permission for a law-abiding citizen to carry their firearm. We as a society don't get to pick and choose which of our rights in the Constitution are more worthy of protecting than another. These words are powerful and relevant as they were when our founders included the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights as they are today, because the Democratic Party's hatred of the Second Amendment and their increasing authoritarian instincts pose a serious threat to our freedoms and is exactly why our rights shall not be infringed. Our founders were visionaries in many ways, and they recognized that our freedoms come from God, not the government. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party leaders reject this truth and as a result are openly hostile towards people of faith and spirituality, actively trying to undermine our religious freedom and therefore the spiritual foundation of this country. We've seen over time how high-profile Democratic leaders mock or openly discriminate against people of faith, especially Christians, as we went back to the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, her faith being judged. We've seen most recently the FBI setting its sights on those they deem as radical traditional Catholics, suggesting that they need to develop sources within the church and go and monitor people in their place of worship. One of the characteristics of a radical traditional Catholic is you choose to go to traditional Latin mass. Insanity. Thomas Jefferson said, God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? To recognize each other as children of God is to appreciate that every one of us belongs to God and to no one else. No government, no person, no individual has the right to take away the freedom that God has given us. This is the foundation of the social construct that is the United States of America. This is the core of who we are as Americans. Love you too. And we love and respect each other, recognizing that we are all children of God. We recognize that each of us has this intrinsic right within our own hearts to have a deeply personal relationship with God and the freedom to express and practice that faith without fear of any state-sponsored reprisal or censorship or discrimination. Any political party that is trying to erase the presence of God from every facet of public life as the Democratic Party is doing and is hostile towards those who choose to worship God, they cannot be trusted to protect our inalienable God-given rights enshrined in the Constitution and should not be in power. Unfortunately we live in a country today where the Democratic Party and their blind pursuit of power reject this truth. They refuse to recognize that we are all God's children and therefore they reduce each of us to the color of our skin. They're using identity politics to tear us apart. They are fomenting anti-white racism and fanning the flames of divisiveness all for their own political gain. And what's so disturbing about this is they are proud of it. This is not something happening behind the curtains. President Biden's press secretary, I think you probably saw the other day, she was there at the podium in the White House listing off proudly all of these statistics and quoting the quote-unquote diversity of the Biden administration, talking about gender and race and sexuality, but not talking about capabilities and accomplishments. They're directly betraying Dr. Martin Luther King's dream as they racialize every issue, doing the exact opposite of what Dr. King preached, judging us purely based on the color of our skin, rather than on the content of our character. They've become the racist that they claim to hate and dangerously they reject things like objective truth. They reject the fact that there is such a thing as a woman. I think all the ladies here can attest to we are in fact real, yes? Now I've seen and I've been and I served in Congress for eight years and I've listened to these speeches where they claim to be champions of women and equal rights and self-proclaimed feminists, but the reality is the Biden administration is spitting in the face of every one of us as women by rejecting the fact that we as women exist and are not just a construct of someone's mind. And this right here is their hypocrisy exposed. There is no greater expression of hatred and hostility towards women than trying to erase us as an entire category of people. Even worse, they're going so far as to claim that it's sexual harassment to address someone by the wrong pronouns, trying to enforce compliance by regulating our speech and thought. The danger here is that when those in power deny the existence of objective truth, we take away all boundaries in our society and the truth becomes whatever those in power say it is at any given time. Just to list a few examples of this insanity, they are trying to tell us pedophilia is normal because minor attracted persons should be respected and accepted. And allowing these people to go and teach our kids in school, it is sick. They support and promote the mutilation of children through the use of puberty blockers and chemical castration and irreversible surgeries all in the name of so-called gender affirming care. This is being actively promoted by cabinet members in the Biden administration and President Biden himself. And it's not just an idea. They are threatening to take children away from parents who refuse to comply and are actually standing up for the safety and well-being of their kids. They're normalizing infanticide by advocating for abortion on demand without exception even up to and after birth. They believe that government is responsible for raising our kids, not our parents. Terry McAuliffe in Virginia saying, hey, you as parents don't get a say in your kid's education. These things go beyond simple differences in opinion or having different views on an issue because the party that is in power in the White House right now is weaponizing the security state and federal agencies against political opponents and those of us who dare to challenge them. Those who dare to speak truth and common sense in the face of their insane, radical agenda. The strength of our democracy relies on our trust, we the people's trust, in the rule of law. And by weaponizing these public institutions for their own benefit, Democratic leaders are undermining the rule of law and turning our democracy into a banana republic. Now the list of examples of how they're doing this is too long. We don't have enough time to go through them today. But just to name a few, you remember Obama using the IRS to target conservative organizations. We have Biden's Department of Justice arresting peaceful pro-life protesters and sending them to prison. He's labeled supporters of President Trump as the most extremist group in our country and a threat to our democracy. They created the Domestic Terror Unit, Department of Homeland Security, to go after parents for having the audacity to show up at their board of education and say, we don't want you teaching our kids about sexuality. We don't want you taking them to drag shows. We don't want you bringing sex toys to second graders in school. Of course we had Chuck Schumer directly threatening Supreme Court justices with consequences if they dared to overturn Roe v. Wade. When the party in power doesn't believe in the rule of law, but they're the ones responsible for not only writing, but enforcing those laws, our democracy is doomed. There are a lot more examples I could give, but the most pressing and urgent existential threat of them all is that President Biden has pushed us, the American people and the world, to the precipice of nuclear war, waging a new Cold War, risking the start of World War III that can only result in destroying the world as we know it. I love our country and I'm proud to serve and wear the uniform as a soldier in the Army Reserves. And as a soldier, I know firsthand the importance of ensuring our military is trained, ready and capable to fulfill our mission, to ensure the safety, security and freedom of the American people. So no matter how much lip service President Biden and the Democratic Party give as they say, well, we are for freedom and security and democracy, the reality is that they don't really care about any of those things. They are focused on filling the pockets of their bosses in the military-industrial complex, despite the fact that doing so actually undermines our national security, economy and future. President Biden and warmongers from both parties in Congress, they've sent now over $100 billion to fuel this proxy war that the United States and NATO is waging against Russia through Ukraine. Last week it was another $500 million, yesterday it's another $400 million of our taxpayer money continuing to escalate this war that could at any moment spark a direct conflict between the U.S. and NATO and Russia, the world's most nuclear-armed country. The insanity of all this is you have President Biden, leaders in the Biden administration, warmongers in Washington, all talking about this as though it's just another day, talking about the prospect of World War III and nuclear war with a straight face about how it can be won. President Reagan understood how ridiculous that notion is and how dangerous it is. He recognized the existential threat of standing on the brink of nuclear war and he said a nuclear war can never be won and should never be fought. It was true then and it's true today. He exercised the courageous leadership necessary to walk us back from the brink of nuclear war then. We lack that courageous leadership today. The warmongering elite, they don't care. They don't care about the consequences of their policies and their decisions because trust me, they've got the bunkers that they can go to to protect themselves and their families where they can continue to wage these wars even in the event of a nuclear attack and they're completely fine with leaving the rest of us to perish because we have no shelter. We have no place to go. I raised this issue when I ran for president in 2020. Every day on the campaign and on the national debate stage, the politicians and the media, they didn't care then and they don't care now. They ignored this because they don't care about us. The reality is though, it doesn't need to be this way. Our future is in our hands. We have no time to waste to protect our children, to protect our loved ones, to protect this country that we love. We have to lift our voices and stand up to these cowardly warmongering positions in both parties and stop them from destroying us all. When I was deployed to Iraq during the height of that war, there was a big sign at the main gate that our patrols went into and out of every single day. That sign struck me the first day that I saw it and every day after. It read in big block letters, is today the day? Is today the day? It was a daily reminder to me and to every one of us that any day could be our last. It was a reminder to me to take shelter in God and his unconditional love and to make the most of every day that I have to do my best to love him and to live a life of service that's pleasing to him. The truth of that message on that sign is just as relevant to us here today as it was to those of us who were deployed to Iraq. Life is short. None of us knows how much time we have. And so as Americans who love this country, no matter what our differences may be, as people who cherish peace, security, and freedom, we have no time to waste. Our country is calling on us. And motivated by love, aloha, we must stand together. We must draw inspiration from the ideals and the hopes that our founders had for this country, the hopes that they had for us, and be the spark that lights that fire of change where we can save our country, defend our future, and truly bring about a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. God bless you all. Thank you very much. Aloha.