Former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard says she’s leaving Democratic Party

(Gray News) - Tulsi Gabbard, a former Hawaii U.S. representative and one-time presidential candidate, announced that she’s no longer a Democrat on social media on Monday.

In her video statement, she called the leaders of the party an “elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness.”

Gabbard served as the U.S. representative for Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District from 2013 to 2021, and was the first American Samoan woman in Congress as well as the first practicing Hindu member of Congress, according to Iowa State University and other sources.

She unsuccessfully ran for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, the first female combat veteran to run for president.

Among her controversies was a meeting with Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, an accused war criminal, in 2017.

Gabbard was the youngest person elected to public office in the Hawaii’s history when she was elected to the Hawaii House of Representatives at age 21 in 2002.

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