(BSDMS) – AUSTIN, TEXAS – Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) CRUSHED it at the CNN Town Hall Sunday evening with her excellent answers to questioners. Gabbard took to the stage at around 8 p.m. ET as scheduled, with CNN host Dana Bash.
Gabbard is 37 years old, which if she wins the 2020 presidential election, would become the youngest President ever in the U.S. She would also be the first woman President, and the first Iraq War veteran to serve as commander in chief.
Questioners at the town hall were Democrats and Independents who plan on voting democratically in the 2020 election. Gabbard wore a Lei to the town hall, which she generally wears in Hawaii, but people she met up with who are from Hawaii yesterday, were kind enough to give her a Lei. Now I will describe questions asked to Gabbard, and the answers she gave.
Cynthia Machata – Marketing and Communications: “How can you be both an anti-interventionist and also serve in the military?”
Tulsi Gabbard’s reply, “For this important question that is personal to me, but is important to all of us as Americans, I’m a solider, I have served in the Army National Guard now for nearly 15 years. I’m a major and I’ve deployed twice to the Middle-East.”
“In congress I’ve served on the foreign affairs committee, the armed services committee, homeland securities committee now for over the last six years. So I have a very personal understanding, as well as an understanding from Washington about the cost of war, and who pays the price.
During my first deployment to Iraq, I served in a medical unit, where my very first task every single day, was to go through a list of names, of every single American service member who had been injured in combat the day before.”
“This was the first thing I did every day for the year I was deployed, and every day seeing in such a heart-wrenching way who pays the price, and my brothers and sisters who never made that trip home, who paid that ultimate price. And those who did, coming home with wounds both visible and invisible that they would continue to struggle with for years after.”
“My position and my commitment in fighting to end these counter-productive regime change wars is based on these experiences and my understanding of the cost of war and who pays the price. Yes it is our service members, it is our troops, it is out military families.”
“It is the people in these countries where these wars are waged, whose suffering ends up far worse after we launch these regime change wars.”
“But it is also every single one of us here, every single American who’s paying for these wars through our tax payer dollars, trillions of our tax payer dollars being spent, dollars that should be used to invest in and to meet and serve the needs of people here at home. To pay for things like healthcare, and education, to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.”
“So as a soldier I stand ready to serve and protect and to defend this country, and as a soldier I know the cost of war, and as President and commander in chief I will end these regime change wars.”
“I will work to end this new cold war, and this nuclear arms race that is costing us trillion, and again, take those resources, those limited resources, and use them to serve the needs of people here.”
Jessica James – Consultant: “Do you remain skeptical, as you were in 2017, that Bashar Al-Assad used chemicals warfare against Syrian civilians?”
Tulsi Gabbard answered with saying she wants to correct that. That there’s been some misunderstanding. “There have been reports that show there have been chemical weapons used both by the Syrian government as well as different terrorist groups on the ground in Syria.”
“The skepticism and the questions that I raised, were very specific around incidents that the Trump administration was trying to use, as an excuse to launch a U.S. military attack in Syria.”
Tulsi Gabbard also mentioned she served in Iraq, which was a war based on lies and launched without evidence. She says that as a soldier, an American, and a member of congress it is her duty and responsibility to exercise skepticism any time anyone tries to send our service members into harm’s way, or use our military to go in and start a new war.
Gabbard also agrees that Assad should be prosecuted for war crimes if that is what the evidence shows, but that in the past (Iraq War) that even the United Nations were duped, along with our country.
Rayellen Smith – Accountant and Democratic Activist: “What is your position on Medicare for All and the impact it might have to the insurance industry, thousands of jobs being lost, and the potential of a large segment of our economy vanishing?”
Gabbard responds, “I support Medicare for all, and I want to tell you why. It is unacceptable that in our country we pay far more for healthcare than any other country in the world, yet we have far worse outcomes than any other country in the world.
We have to look at why that is, and we have to understand that in this country, it’s unacceptable for anyone to be sick and in need of care, and not able to get that care simply because they don’t have enough money.
So Medicare for all… which we are paying right now at the high cost of healthcare that we are paying, Medicare for all would take out that insurance company that we are writing a big check to every month, and instead we would be able to lower that cost of healthcare by taking out that bloated, administrative fees, and the heavy profits that insurance companies are making on the backs of sick people in this country, and instead write that check for Medicare for all, where we would have that coverage for everyone.”
Tulsi Gabbard also talked about solving the problems of the high cost of prescription drugs and bringing down the cost of healthcare by levitating people from that high-cost middle man. Gabbard mentioned that insurance companies would not go away, but that Medicare for all would always be an option.
Gabbard answered some other questions, including about how to counter the perception that the Democratic legacy has been turned into a socialist agenda. Gabbard replied with talking about how it’s just a label that is pitting one side against the other, and further dividing this country. She says we shouldn’t fall into this “trap of labels” and that we should be focusing first and foremost on the people.
Looking back at Senator Bernie Sanders CNN Town Hall, most of the questioners were actually political insiders, which have ties to Sanders’ opposition. Seems a similar event may have happened at Tulsi Gabbard’s CNN Town Hall, since CNN is known for doing unethical things such as that to progressive candidates. Progressives have been battle-worn to this behavior and Gabbard shrugged it off.
Sidenote: Bernie Sanders position on reparations has been the most widely logical and appreciated view yet and most have shown that as Americans they can appreciate that approach.
Tulsi Gabbard has also been doing very well in the internet polling when included. Landlines are an outdated way to do polling since most Americans don’t have landlines anymore with critics saying polls should be online only. Gabbard’s positions on Decriminalizing and Legalizing Sex Work as well as all forms of Cannabis have been very popular with millennials and silvers. However, Gabbard now says she wants to legalize all drugs.
You can watch the full video of Gabbard’s CNN Town Hall here on YouTube:
Kyle James Lee – BSDMS – This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
