January 26, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Libertarian-leaning Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii is dissenting from her party yet again, this time taking issue with Democrats using the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill as justification to paint peaceful conservatives as terrorists.
“It’s so dangerous…when you have people like former CIA Director John Brennan openly talking about how he’s spoken with or heard from appointees and nominees in the Biden administration who are already starting to look across our country for these types of movements similar to the insurgencies they’ve seen overseas, that in his words, he says make up this ‘unholy alliance of religious extremists, racists, bigots,’ he lists a few others and at the end, ‘even libertarians,’” Gabbard told Fox News’s Brian Kilmeade last week.
Gabbard was referring to a recent MSNBC appearance in which Brennan claimed that right-wing domestic extremism “looks very similar to insurgency movements that we’ve seen overseas, where they germinate in different parts of a country, and they gain strength, and it brings together an unholy alliance, frequently, of religious extremists, authoritarians, fascists, bigots, racists, nativists, even libertarians.”
“What characteristics are we looking for as we are building this profile of a potential extremist, what are we talking about?” Gabbard asked. “Religious extremists, are we talking about Christians, evangelical Christians, what is a religious extremist? Is it somebody who is pro-life? Where do you take this? You start looking at obviously, have to be a white person, obviously likely male, libertarians, anyone who loves freedom, liberty, maybe has an American flag outside their house, or people who, you know, attended a Trump rally… A targeting of almost half the country.”
All of this talk, Gabbard warned, “just goes to further tear our country apart, and it moves towards what Joe Biden said in his inauguration speech that it shouldn't happen which is a dehumanization of your opponent and that's where his voice is so necessary right now.”
On Tuesday, Gabbard followed up with a statement clarifying that she believes the rioters who stormed Congress “were behaving like domestic enemies of our country,” but so are Brennan, Senate Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff, and the heads of tech giants such as Facebook and Twitter:
The mob who stormed the capitol to try to stop Congress from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities were behaving like domestic enemies of our country. But let us be clear, the John Brennan's, Adam Schiffs and the oligarchs in Big Tech who are… pic.twitter.com/Q3VssCiz5l
— Tulsi Gabbard �� (@TulsiGabbard) January 26, 2021
President Biden, I call upon you & all of Congress from both parties to denounce efforts by Brennan & others to take away our civil liberties endowed to us by our Creator & guaranteed in our Constitution. If you don’t stand up to them now, then our country will be in great peril.
— Tulsi Gabbard �� (@TulsiGabbard) January 26, 2021
A vocal opponent of Big Tech censorship, Gabbard has earned the affection of some conservatives for her independence from Democrat orthodoxy, including on issues such as banning third-trimester abortions and protecting women’s sports from transgender activists. She is not a centrist, however; she has voted in lockstep with the abortion and LGBT lobbies for most of her House tenure, favors decriminalizing prostitution, and endorsed socialist Bernie Sanders for president in 2016.
Gabbard’s father, a Hawaii state senator and rare pro-life Democrat, is speaking at the “virtual” 2021 March for Life on Friday.