Tulsi Gabbard on Monday voiced her displeasure with a recent report detailing payments her 2020 presidential campaign received from an alleged Russian agent.
Appearing on the friendly airwaves of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the former congresswoman criticized “so-called journalists” and accused “the media” of “lying.”
Last Thursday, The Daily Beast reported that an alleged Russian agent donated to the Hawaii Democrat’s 2020 presidential campaign. Dual Russian-American national Elena Branson, also known as Elena Chernykh, illegally pushed pro-Russia policies in the U.S. without registering under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, according to a criminal complaint filed last week. Her only campaign contributions over nearly a decade of lobbying for Kremlin interests went to Gabbard, according to the Beast report. (A spokesperson for Gabbard said she intends to give the total amount donated, $59.95, to a charity.) Branson fled the U.S. last year and is still at large.
ADVERTISEMENT
“You saw headlines a couple of days ago: ‘Tulsi Gabbard Paid Off By Russian Agents,’” the former Democratic candidate said. “What the media is lying about is the fact that an American citizen gave my campaign a $59 contribution coming from a woman I’ve never met, someone I don’t know, I don’t know anything about, but somehow they feel justified in saying, ‘Tulsi Gabbard is being paid off.’”
Gabbard, who has parroted the Russian government’s stance on its invasion of Ukraine so well that she has been cited approvingly by Russian state television, then accused the press of somehow threatening the U.S. government.
“The danger in the media lying so blatantly to the American people—these so-called journalists who have a responsibility to the public—it poses a very direct threat to our democratic republic because they continue to get away with it,” Gabbard asserted, sounding more and more like Carlson. “They continue to parrot and propagate these lies and they need to be held accountable. They need to be exposed.”
