Tulsi Gabbard on Mitt Romney: “I challenged him to back this serious allegation with evidence”
Former Democrat-turned-Independent Tulsi Gabbard got a little even with Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican who accused her of spreading “treasonous lies” about Russia during her 2020 presidential campaign, during a congressional hearing on Thursday.
Romney said of Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and an officer in the U.S. Army National Guard and Army Reserve, “Tulsi Gabbard is parroting false Russian propaganda. Her treasonous lies may well cost lives.”
During her testimony, Gabbard went straight after Romney. “Mitt Romney accuses me of treason, a crime that is punishable by death under our laws. I challenged him to back this serious allegation with evidence. What was this based on? There was no response, no explanation, no evidence, and certainly no apology.”
She went on to say that such outrageous and false remarks are “often shrugged off as, ‘Well, hey, it’s politics. People say things about each other all the time.’ That may be easy for some of you to say. But for somebody who wears the uniform, this is serious, and it is serious not only to me, but to my fellow service members and veterans.”
“Before every deployment, we have to make peace with the possibility that we may not come home,” she continued. “When those who dare to challenge the establishment are targeted by this powerful conglomerate of government, corporate media and Big Tech weaponizing…all that they have against the people for their own selfish gain.
It has a dangerous, chilling effect on free speech, and it sends a very powerful message: If you dare to challenge us, we will come after you. The more we allow this to happen, we start looking less and less like a democratic republic and more and more like a banana republic.”