Tulsi, the Mainstream Media and Treason

by Renee Parsons

In case you had not noticed, there is an existential crisis going on within both the MSM and Democratic party that has been on full display during the June and July DNC sponsored presidential debates – and today the DNC and its media sycophants are lock-step in panic mode. 

In the aftermath of the July debate when Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hi) shined a light on her campaign and took Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Cal) to task for her misleading record on criminal justice as California Attorney General, the MSM and its Democratic flunkies have pummeled Gabbard about an unplanned meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2017 just as they have done since Gabbard first announced her candidacy.

Let’s be clear:   Is the MSM accusing Gabbard of treason?  If they are suggesting that a Major in the US Army National Guard and a combat veteran who served in a medical unit in Iraq for one year committed a treasonous act, they need to make the facts immediately available to the Pentagon and make their factual case to the American public. 

If they do not present any facts to support their allegation, then they have once again proven to be no more than vengeful ideological toadies who march to the Deep State’s agenda of sabotaging Gabbard’s campaign.    

Immediately after announcing her candidacy, Gabbard and her anti-regime change war message have been systematically dismissed as a Russian/Putin/Assad apologist and delegitimized by both the DNC and MSM.  Given limitations to media access that other candidates have been afforded, she has been forced to deal with hostility and disrespect rather than speak to the issue of peace.   To her credit, Gabbard has learned to push back and stand her ground as the debate platform has provided a perfect setting for her to standout. 

As long as Gabbard made few waves with her foreign policy pronouncements and continued to poll at 1%, she represented no threat to anyone.  Now that Gabbard has rocked the debate stage a second time as the top trending candidate on Google with her challenge to Rep. Tim Ryan and now to Sen. Kamala Harris with her disputed record as a ‘progressive prosecutor,” the powers that be have sharpened their knives to question Gabbard’s patriotism and destroy her credibility.     

With a growing self-confidence that the American public is responding to her agenda, Gabbard, who has been overly cautious about stepping outside her signature issue, is spreading her wings to show a depth and strength as she easily qualified for the September debate. 

Immediately after the debate, Harris had no factual rebuttal to Gabbard’s points as she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper:

“This is going to sound immodest but I am obviously a top-tier candidate so I did expect

to take the hits tonight because a lot of them are trying to make the stage for the next debate.” 

Adding his support, Cooper added “for a lot of them, it’s do or die” as Harris continued

“…coming from someone who has been an apologist for an individual Assad who has murdered the people of his country like cock-a-roaches, she who has embraced and been an apologist for him in a way that she refuses to call him a war criminal    I can only take what she says and her opinion so seriously.  I’m prepared to move on.”   

Is Sen Harris accusing a Major in the Army National Guard of treason?   If so, let’s hear her facts and if not, Harris needs to clean up her act.  It is an old political trick: when you don’t have the facts, bring out the personal attack and then ‘move on’.

It was those early media kerfuffles with pro-war, pro-establishmentarians that tempered Gabbard to stay focused and maintain her cool as in her interview with former CIA intern Cooper who now masquerades as a CNN ‘journalist.’  In a post-debate interview, Cooper was persistent, if not relentlessly dogged, in his pursuit by displaying a new aggressive media strategy as no other candidate is experiencing.

Tulsi:     “I’ve seen the cost of war first hand.  In Iraq, serving in a medical unit.  I would never apologize for doing all that I can to fight counter productive regime change wars.  If that means meeting with a dictator or meeting with an adversary, absolutely.  I  would do it.” 

Cooper:  Do you consider him (Assad) a torturer or a murderer?    

Tulsi:     That’s not what this is about.  I don’t defend or apologize or have anything to do with what he has done to his people.

Cooper:  But if you’re president of the United States, there’s traditionally a role for a US President to call out human abuses overseas..

Tulsi       Here’s the way I look at it, an example of the kind of leadership that I follow is one where Kennedy met with and worked with Khrushchev to forge a deal to keep the American people safe, Reagan met with Gorbachev, Roosevelt met with Stalin, worked with Stalin, Nixon met with Mao; these are the kinds of leaders who think about things that are very practical and real level about how to keep our country and people safe.

Cooper   …but Stalin killed 20 million people

Tulsi      That’s my point exactly.  Roosevelt not only met with him but allied with him to bring about an end to that war.

Cooper    ..but I’m sure Roosevelt would have acknowledged Stalin murdered millions of people, but you don’t want to…

Tulsi   I don’t dispute that..

Cooper   …but you won’t say anything about Bashar Al-assad.

Tulsi   I’ve been very outspoken about this before.  These are things that are being used to distract from the central issue which is that we are still waging a regime change war in Syria, we still have troops in Syria, troops who are dying, that’s why I’m running, to bring about this sea change…”

Cooper    “Just on a factual basis, Assad is a murderer and a torturer, do you not agree with that?

Tulsi       “I don’t dispute that.”

It is apparent that Cooper had his marching orders to entrap Gabbard at all cost, to use his weasel words to wear her down, drain her concentration and energy as he manipulated her into agreeing to something that could later be used against her.  One wonders how Cooper might have dealt with the news that it could be claimed that the last three US presidents would qualify as murderers, torturers and war criminals.

The morning after the debate, MSNBC anchor Yasmin Vossoughian of Iranian ethnicity went on the attack in another display of the new antagonistic media strategy on how to handle Gabbard.  One can assume that Vossoughian was hoping to increase her ratings and impress the higher-ups at MSN with her raw aggressiveness as she consistently interrupted Gabbard (nine times) and persisted beyond the point of how a professional journalist conducts an interview.  Gabbard pushed back, demanding to be heard without interruption and calling out MSNBC:

“I want to break this down to what we are talking about.. You’re talking about a meeting that took place three years ago and every time I come back here on MSNBC you have got to talk to me about these issues…every single time for three years?  This is where the propaganda comes in because I have talked about this A LOT for the last three years.”

Vossoughian’s interruptions continued declaring that a meeting with Assad is ‘very controversial meeting to take’ has no understanding that there should be nothing controversial about meeting with any foreign leader:  it is called diplomacy. 

Was Vossoughian implying that Gabbard as an officer in the US Army National Guard has conducted treason?  If so, she needs to ‘put up or shut up.’   Gabbard’s response:

“I will not apologize to you or to anyone, let me finish, let me finish, for doing all that I can to, all that I can to prevent our country from continuing to make these perpetual wrong decisions, I will continue to do all that I can to make sure that we end these wasteful regime change wars that have taken such a toll on all of us and made our country less safe.   And if that means having a meeting with a dictator, if that means trying to meet with Kim Jong-un in North Korea to de-escalate tensions and remove this nuclear threat from our country and our people whatever the crisis is , we’ve got to have a leader with the courage to do the right thing for the American people, putting their interests ahead of everything else.  That is what I am focused on and that is at the center of my foreign policy..:.”

With that, Vossoughian ended the interview.

Obviously, there is a distinct difference between diplomacy and treason as the MSM and its partisan rubes can be expected to continue to badger and persecute Gabbard without regard to the truth, honesty or professionalism.

It is worth noting that being a network ‘anchor’ or a television personality with a multi million dollar salary in no way implies that one has ‘felt’ the egalitarian calling to be a journalist.

Renee Parsons has been a member of the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist with Friends of the Earth and staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found on Twitter @reneedove31