In her first weekend on the campaign trail in a new alliance with New Hampshire GOP Senate candidate and on-again-off-again election denier Don Bolduc, Tulsi Gabbard compared President Joe Biden to Adolf Hitler.
Speaking at a Bolduc town hall event in a town outside of Manchester on Sunday, the former Hawaii congresswoman and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate stipulated that she’s “pretty sure” both Biden and Hitler share a “mindset” of good intentions to justify authoritarian behavior, according to audio obtained by The Daily Beast.
“And this is something that is, you know, throughout history, we look at authoritarian leaders and dictators in other countries,” Gabbard said in a tangent about Biden’s Philadelphia speech from September on anti-democratic extremism among “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans.”
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“I'm pretty sure they all believe they’re doing what’s best,” Gabbard continued. “Even Hitler thought he was doing what was best for Germany, right? For the German race. In his own mind, he found a way to justify the means to meet his end. So when we have people with that mindset, well, you know we’ve got to do whatever it takes because, as President Biden said in that speech in Philadelphia, that those who supported Trump, those who didn't vote for him are extremists and a threat to our democracy.”
Representatives for Gabbard and the Bolduc campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In a radio interview on Monday, Gabbard also didn’t rule out another presidential run when asked about any future ambitions after announcing her plans to leave the Democratic Party last week.
"It's also not something I am thinking about right now,” Gabbard said, according to Kevin Landrigan of the New Hampshire Union Leader.
Gabard is scheduled to join Bolduc for two other campaign events on Monday: a meet-and-greet in Laconia and another town hall in North Conway.
Bolduc, a retired brigadier general, has been trying to boost his messaging on veterans issues as he continues to trail Sen. Maggie Hassan by an average of 8 points.
Both the Granite State Senate hopeful and the newly-minted podcast host have cast themselves as outsiders willing to stand up to the national defense establishment, with Bolduc first coming into the public sphere as a champion of an alternative treatment for PTSD by injection, which later gained research funding from the military among active-duty troops.
Gabbard, who deployed to Iraq between 2004 and 2005 for the Hawaii Army National Guard, has long been critical of U.S. intervention overseas and also maintains that Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad is not a war criminal.
"I tried to get words like compassion, empathy, and humanity in the dialogue of leadership traits in the military, but they were considered by the leadership as being too soft terms,” Bolduc told the Union-Leader in a Sunday interview after campaigning alongside Gabbard.
He continued, "There are many people who don't know me that judge me as a heartless general who stands up at the position of attention and follows orders.”
