(CNN) — Former Congresswoman and 2020 Presidential nominee Tulsi Gabbard announced Tuesday that she is leaving the Democratic Party.
For Gabbard, the announcement is the culmination of years of increasingly engaging with the Democratic Party and its politics.
“I can’t stay in the Democratic Party any longer today. It is now under the total control of an elite cabal of warmongers, driven by a cowardly awakening, dividing us by racistizing all issues and fomenting anti-white racism, who are actively working to undermine our God-given freedoms, the enshrined in our constitution,” Gabbard said in a video posted to social media. The announcement came on the first episode of her new podcast, The Tulsi Gabbard Show.
Gabbard, who made history by becoming the first practicing American and Hindu Samoan to serve in Congress after being elected in 2012, also criticized what she described as the Democrats’ “open borders” policies and anti-police rhetoric.
The former congresswoman who represented Hawaii’s 2nd Circuit has long been a unique and occasionally controversial voice in the Democratic Party.
As one of the Democratic presidential nominees in the crowded field of 2020, she described herself as a veteran of the Iraq war and espoused an outspoken anti-interventionist foreign policy. During the campaign, she blamed US intervention in Latin America for creating the instability that led to increased migration across the US southern border and backed several bills aimed at keeping migrant families together at the border.
And when Gabbard ran for president, Hillary Clinton indicated in an interview that she was prepared to run as a third-party candidate and that she was a favorite of the Russians. Clinton hinted that the person she was speaking about was a “Russian asset,” though she didn’t name the Hawaiian Democrat.
Gabbard filed a defamation lawsuit over the matter, which she subsequently dropped in May 2020.
Gabbard supported Joe Biden after he suspended his 2020 presidential campaign, but has since been an outspoken critic of the president and appears regularly on Fox News.
“President Biden has championed a message of unity, overcoming partisan divisions and bringing the country together. He just gave a great speech in which he said that President (Donald) Trump’s supporters are the most extremist group in our country and a threat to our democracy. That’s half the country,” he said in his announcement video on Tuesday.
Gabbard was also criticized earlier this year by local Democrats, who voted to condemn her “for attending a fundraising event that will hurt Democrats across the country” after she spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference .
The former congresswoman did not specify which party she would belong to going forward, but called for “independent-minded Democrats” to join her in leaving the Democratic Party.