A onetime Democratic lawmaker and 2020 presidential candidate blasted President Joe Biden over his voting rights speech, which she compared to Hillary Clinton calling Trump supporters “deplorable.”
Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii noted on Twitter that Biden was promoting divisiveness and hit a new low when, among other things, he said his voting bill determines whether one is “on the side of Dr. King or George Wallace … John Lewis or Bull Connor … Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis.”
“Hillary’s calling tens of millions of Americans deplorables was divisive & disgusting. But Biden has gone further, calling those who disagree with his actions & policies domestic enemies, traitors, and racists,” Gabbard noted.
“But Biden has gone further, calling those who disagree with his actions & policies domestic enemies, traitors, and racists. Biden promised to unite us, but he is doing all he can [to] divide us,” she added in a tweet with a clip of Biden’s speech.
Hillary’s calling tens of millions of Americans deplorables was divisive & disgusting. But Biden has gone further, calling those who disagree with his actions & policies domestic enemies, traitors, and racists. Biden promised to unite us, but he is doing all he can do divide us.
— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺
In 2016, Clinton, then the Democratic presidential nominee, said that “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables … racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.”
As for Gabbard, Clinton suggested during the 2020 Democratic primary cycle that the Hawaii Democrat was a Russian plant, harking on a claim she made about Donald Trump during and after the 2016 campaign.
“I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She’s the favorite of the Russians,” on a podcast with former Obama adviser David Plouffe in October 2019.
Clinton did not mention Gabbard, an Army National Guard major who has served in Iraq, specifically by name, though Plouffe ended the podcast by noting Clinton’s “belief that Tulsi Gabbard is going to be a third-party candidate propped up by Trump and the Russians.”
Gabbard quickly shot down the insinuation.
“Just two days ago, The New York Times put out an article saying that I’m a Russian asset and an Assad apologist and all these different smears,” Gabbard said.
“This morning, a CNN commentator said on national television that I’m an asset of Russia — completely despicable.”
In January 2020, Gabbard filed a $50 million libel suit against Clinton, “claiming the former Democratic presidential nominee ‘carelessly and recklessly impugned’ her reputation when she suggested in October that one of the 2020 Democratic candidates is ‘the favorite of the Russians,'” NBC News reported.
She dropped the lawsuit a few months later as the COVID-19 pandemic spread.
“Plaintiffs Tulsi Gabbard and Tulsi Now, Inc. dismiss this action,” Gabbard’s lawyers, Dan Terzian and Janice Roven, wrote in a court filing in May 2020.
“While they remain certain of the action’s legal merit, they are just as certain that this new COVID and post-COVID world require them to focus their time and attention on other priorities, including defeating Donald Trump in 2020, rather than righting the wrongs here,” they added.