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pnwmom

(109,968 posts)
Sun Jul 20, 2025, 03:02 AM Yesterday

Back in December, a former member of Tulsi's cult warned Congress about her.

A former member of a secretive Hawaiʻi religious sect is warning members of Congress about the potential dangers of confirming Tulsi Gabbard as President-elect Donald Trump’s next director of national intelligence.

Anita van Duyn says she spent 15 years inside the Science of Identity Foundation, a fringe offshoot of Hare Krishna that was formed in the 1970s and has been described by defectors as a cult.

Van Duyn has sent letters to Democratic lawmakers, including Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, detailing Gabbard’s deep ties to the organization and its reclusive founder, Chris Butler, who still resides in a multimillion-dollar beachfront home in Kailua.

SNIP

“Everybody is thinking her allegiance is to Trump, but in reality her allegiance was already given away to her guru,” van Duyn said in an interview with Civil Beat. “You can’t just go in and out of that. That’s a lifetime commitment.”

https://www.civilbeat.org/2024/12/senators-urged-to-examine-gabbards-deep-and-intense-ties-to-hawaii-sect/
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pat_k

(11,467 posts)
1. The Atlantic did a piece in back in Jan (also before confirmation)
Sun Jul 20, 2025, 03:10 AM
Yesterday

They noted that:

"Other than raw ambition, Gabbard’s adherence to Butler’s foundation has been the only perceptible through line in her switchbacking, two-decade political career."


https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/01/is-tulsi-gabbard-a-mystery/681398/?gift=CiksPDoBurvFhUHnw_O61nJi7V9-x8sz9XUWiZg7C1k&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Grim Chieftain

(405 posts)
2. I remember when she was a Bernie supporter
Sun Jul 20, 2025, 05:03 AM
Yesterday

How do you go from being a Bernie supporter to a Trumper? Really?

BoRaGard

(6,376 posts)
4. "Well, she can't be more toxic and treasonous than Krasnov." - G.O.P.
Sun Jul 20, 2025, 05:27 AM
Yesterday

"So what the hell. Let's vote her in. Heh heh." - G.O.P.

B.See

(5,891 posts)
5. Frankly I believe she's a Russian asset, along with
Sun Jul 20, 2025, 07:38 AM
Yesterday

Trump, Fkr Carlson, Vance, Sea-Gull and a whole kaboodle of other treasonous reich wing commies just like em. That's right, called em commies, like their buddy Putin.

As usual they want to project their own bs onto liberals, but last I looked it is THEY who are SABOTAGING democracy.

pat_k

(11,467 posts)
9. Whether Russia is pulling the strings, everything
Sun Jul 20, 2025, 08:22 PM
12 hrs ago

... they do seems to be grounded in hatred of the West. Putin is certainly seen as an ally in the project, but it's unclear to me that he's pulling the strings on the money that has manufactured this insane "movement" over the decades. For the PayPal mafia, it's hatred of the Western world for bringing down their beloved Apartheid. I don't know what other simmering hatred and resentments drive the other players, but their actions ALL scream sabotage of every driver of American progress and prosperity and dismantling of institutions and connections that have ever been employed to do a damn bit of good. The consequences of the 47 regime's acts are so obviously acts of sabotage, I find it beyond mystifying that so many are blind to it.

B.See

(5,891 posts)
10. Yes, I agree. That's why I
Sun Jul 20, 2025, 08:52 PM
12 hrs ago

used the word asset instead of agent (I try to pick words carefully, sometimes deliberately).

Whether directly 'employed' or by happenstance, their malicious undermining /dismantling of democracy (and btw NATO) plays right into Putin's hands.

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