Marnie Masuda

In 2016, I created a private Facebook page called “We Need to Talk about Tulsi” because we really needed to, back then, when Tulsi Gabbard was still in office and entrusted to represent the interests of every person in Hawai’i who lived outside of Honolulu. It didnʻt seem to me like she was doing that very well. It actually seemed like she was working for someone else.

My first clue that Tulsi might not be playing for our team came in the form of a tweet. In October 2015, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard tweeted: “Obama wonʻt bomb the terrorists in Syria. Putin did.”

This bizarre oversimplification of the complex and tragic situation in Syria was more than cringy and naive. It was a slam on our President and the U.S. foreign policy in Syria. It was also a thinly veiled show of support for Syria’s murderous dictator Bashar al-Assad. This coming from someone who was currently serving in the Hawaiʻi National Guard? About her Commander-in-Chief?

About our nation’s stance against Assad, after he’d gassed several towns near Damascus, killing more than 1,400 men, women and children in one horrific swoop? How very peculiar. What was our congressional representative up to? I had to know. It seemed important.

During the following months, a handful of people on Maui who were asking the same questions found each other. We formed a small group that my teenage son lovingly dubbed, “The Tin Foil Hat Club.” We met around my dining room table often, sharing curious and concerning information we uncovered, and strategizing about the best vehicles to share information with the public.

Shay Chan Hodges ran against Gabbard in 2016. Together, we began calling attention to Tulsiʻs questionable choices, in particular her affinity for nationalistic autocrats like Assad, Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin. At best, she didnʻt seem to be centering her constituents. At worst, well … Manchurian Candidate much?

Then there was her relationship with the Science of Identity — the cult-like Hare Krishna offshoot led by surfer-dude-turned-guru Chris Butler. Journalist Christine Gralow, who lived in Kailua mere blocks away from SIFʻs headquarters and campus, began investigating the group and Tulsi’s long relationship with Butler. What she uncovered was unbelievable, but it sure seemed to be true.

It has never been a secret that Tulsi Gabbardʻs father Mike led the attack on marriage equality in Hawaiʻi, which resulted in same-sex marriage being banned. His daughter Tulsi helped make this happen. She was an active member of the Alliance for Traditional Marriage, an organization he founded and led.

The primary goal of the Alliance was to pass an amendment to the State Constitution banning same sex marriage. Hawaiʻi was once celebrated as a leader in the effort to legalize same-sex marriage. Then, thanks to the Gabbards’ passionate anti-gay campaign, Hawaiʻi regressed. We were no longer showing the world our unique commitment to equality and justice for our LGBTQ+ community.

You can still find a startling television ad featuring Mike Gabbard, Tulsi and the Gabbard siblings online. The Gabbard family, still salty and wet from an awesome surf session, inform us that marrying someone of the same sex is just like marrying your sister, your mother, or, ummm … your dog.

The rhetoric in the television ad, it turns out, was informed by Butler, who preached against the evils of homosexuality using strikingly similar, hateful hyperbole. In 2004, as the youngest member of the state House of Representatives, Tulsi Gabbard testified against a bill that would legalize civil unions in Hawai’i, calling those who supported the bill “homosexual extremists.” It would take almost 10 more years for Hawai’i to legalize civil unions.

In 2019, after she decided to run for President as a Democrat, Tulsi Gabbard apologized to the LGBTQ+ community for past statements and said she now supported same sex marriage.

In December 2020, however, Gabbard introduced the “Protect Women’s Sports Act” as her final piece of legislative virtuosity. In it, she argued that Title IX protections were intended for biological women only. The bill went nowhere, but the fact that she introduced it right before leaving office — and before transitioning to the Republican Party — spoke volumes. Chase Strangio, ACLU deputy director for Trans Justice called the move “shameful,” and said it sent “a dangerous message … by spreading the same lies that are fueling attacks against trans youth.”

Washington Post reporter Jon Swaine hit the journalistic jackpot when his source turned over messages and transcripts suggesting Chris Butler was more than Tulsi Gabbard’s spiritual guru. The transcripts and emails seem to show that he was also a heavy-handed political “advisor.” Since the publication of the Washington Post piece, several news outlets have reported an unmistakable chronological correlation between “advice” relayed in the SIF documents (presented more like commandments) and Gabbard’s political speech and actions.

If you read Christine Gralowʻs meticulously researched and well-written blog “Meanwhile in Hawaiʻi,” you’ll learn almost all you need to know about the Science of Identity and the Chris Butler/Gabbard connection. When Honolulu Magazine accepted a story Gralow wrote about Tulsi Gabbard, a man named Chris Cooper — who was on Tulsi Gabbardʻs campaign payroll as a public relations contractor and also happened to be a lobbyist for Russian interests — sent the magazine a scathing letter about the writer and urged the magazine to kill the story. The editorial department obliged. If they hadnʻt, Honolulu may have broken the Butler-Gabbard story long ago.

For 10 years or more, a few of us shared what we knew and wondered about Tulsi, what we experienced, and what and whom we encountered along the way, with anyone who would listen. We spoke with national journalists, many of whom ran stories about her cagey behavior and incomprehensible about-faces. When Tulsi met with Trump right after he was elected in 2016, we talked about it. When she took a secret, privately funded trip to meet Bashar al-Assad, an enemy of the United States, we talked about it. When she continued to hold Vladimir Putin up as the model of a strong leader, we talked about it. When she refused to rebuke Putin for imprisoning or murdering (or both) journalists and attorneys and anyone who threatened his stranglehold on Russia, we talked about it.

We urged people to support Shay Chan Hodges and Sherry Aluʻs respective campaigns. Some savvy and brave folks were willing to speak up, to upset the status quo, to help unseat the wildly popular “surfer-gal” incumbent. The vast majority didn’t want to talk about Tulsi. There was a moment of hope, however. When the Hawaiʻi State Teachers Association endorsed Sherry Alu, we thought we might have a shot at some real representation in Congress. Even with the formidable endorsement, the shallow upper crust of Tulsi’s carefully curated persona held sway, and Alu lost the race by a wide margin.

The candidate who claimed to be “anti-war” but continued to collect a paycheck from the military, and stood ready to heed the call to join a “regime change war” at any time, remained in her seat in the Capitol. The contradictions and playdates with war criminals made it clear to us that something was rotten in Congressional District 2. When Gabbard ran in the 2020 presidential primary, some of the publications and journalists we had contacted came through with stories about her. Kai Kahele stepped up to run for her seat in Congress. Tulsi ran to her friends in the Republican party and Fox News. She became a paid contributor for the right wing propaganda machine. Then Donald J. Trump selected her to be top spy in his fascist regime. And here we are.

My son stopped calling us “The Tin Foil Hat Club” years ago. The New York Times referred to us as a “cottage industry of researchers, former opponents and Democratic strategists,” and that sounded much better. He finally admitted he was proud of our little group and our unshakable commitment to the truth. Nothing feels better than the moment your kid admits you were right about something. It also felt pretty good to wake up and see the recent headline in the Washington Post: “Tulsi Gabbard, her guru, and the mysterious messages that helped shape her political career.”

A lot of people are talking about Tulsi. Now what?

Well, I hope the confounding, bizarre phenomenon that is Tulsi Gabbard gives us pause to consider the importance of applying appropriate scrutiny, demanding accountability, and asking tough questions to and about those we elect to represent us. It’s our job as members of a representative democracy. It’s also Indivisible’s foundational purpose.

I predict Swaine’s Washington Post exclusive is the first of many fascinating stories that emerge about our former CD2 congressional representative. Stay tuned.

Marnie Masuda is a Lead Organizer for Maui Indivisible. For more information about Indivisible, log on to indivisiblehawaii.org/chapters/maui/ or request to join Maui Indivisible: Fighting for a People Powered Democracy on Facebook.