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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTulsi Gabbard was a Manchurian Candidate...and inside our intelligence knowledge base!
Tulsi Gabbard, her guru and the mysterious messages that helped shape her political careerWashington Post
By Jon Swaine
Some former members, however, have called the group a cult and said disciples were isolated from the outside world, characterizations the group has denied. Former devotees had been telling me for weeks that Butler controlled his followers major life decisions and demanded total obedience and secrecy. They said he spent years working to extend his reach into politics and they suspected Gabbards rise in Washington was the culmination of that effort.
Now that Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman, had been picked by President-elect Donald Trump to be director of national intelligence, I wanted to understand: Just how much influence did Butler have on her?
/SNIP
Dozens of attached memos appeared to document directives and advice for Gabbard from her time in Congress. Some contained instructions on what legislation she should propose, which policies she should embrace and how she should conduct herself on television. They had an air of authority. A memo about a proposal to partition war-torn Iraq into three states quoted an unnamed person as saying it was time for TG to come up with this idea.
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Rachel Maddow just covered this story. The details are stunning. Too much to put in a four paragraph excerpt. Here is an archived link to the WaPo article.
https://t.co/hLMFJBZBLB
mcar
(46,538 posts)Many on the left loved her in 2020.
mr715
(4,841 posts)"If the nesting doll fits..."
Tulski .
yellow dahlia
(6,888 posts)One of my very progressive friends kept singing her praises, and doubting me.
Just call me Cassandra.
Tom Rinaldo
(23,200 posts)She was selected as a Vice Chair of the Democratic Party National Committee, before changing her stripes the first time.. We all have to be on guard against ambitious elected figures who tell us what we want to hear. John Edwards excelled at that also. There are many good people who are Democratic leaders of every stripe within our broader coalition. There are also always some pretenders.
mcar
(46,538 posts)We need to look deeper and beyond the words.
mahina
(20,832 posts)Blue Owl
(60,065 posts)Never once was there a shocking expose even though plenty of evidence has been out there for several years now .
yellow dahlia
(6,888 posts)House of Roberts
(6,723 posts)As I recall a certain Joe Biden fellow suggested this very same thing in 2006 when he was senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
This Swaine at WaPo needed to come up with a better example than that.
LetMyPeopleVote
(183,882 posts)No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are and where the instructions came from, Chuck Schumer said. We need answers.
As Tulsi Gabbard faces a fresh round of exceedingly difficult questions about the influence of her âguru,â itâs also worth asking the 52 Senate Republicans (including alleged "moderates" like Susan Collins) who ignored every red flag and voted to confirm her to serve as DNI:
— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-06-23T18:49:58.260Z
Any regrets?
https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/tulsi-gabbard-guru-dni
Gabbard, who wrapped up her tenure as DNI last week, has long insisted that any suggestion that she was somehow enthralled to or controlled by this sect or its leader, whom she has referred to as her guru, is just bigotry against her faith.
But its against this backdrop that The Washington Post obtained hundreds of secret memos prepared for Gabbard during her congressional tenure, which were put together by members of the alleged cult and which included thousands of pages of specific directives to her on policy and politics.
After careful analysis of thousands of these documents, which have not been independently verified by MS NOW, the Post determined that they likely came from Gabbards secretive guru, a man named Chris Butler......
This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor and commented on the reporting:
There are reports that Tulsi Gabbard was receiving instructions from a so-called guru and repeating them word for word. That ought to concern all of us if its true. No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are, and where the instructions came from. We need answers.
.....It stands to reason, for example, that Gabbard has some explaining to do, but Im also interested in the answers from those who elevated her to an influential intelligence office in the first place.
In February 2025, confronted with an avalanche of reasons to reject Gabbards nomination, 52 Senate Republicans every GOP member except Kentuckys Mitch McConnell shrugged off every red flag and voted to confirm her as the nations DNI, including so-called moderates such as Maines Susan Collins and Alaskas Lisa Murkowski.
The question for these 52 senators seems obvious: Do you regret that confirmation vote and now recognize it as a mistake? Or do you still think it was a good idea to put Gabbard in this influential intelligence position?
LetMyPeopleVote
(183,882 posts)Gabbard was a puppet and obey the instructions of her guru
MS NOW's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski expressed shock over a new report exposing the decades-long influence of Tulsi Gabbard's religious mentor over her political career. "It is a Hare Krishna-styled group that many people have compared to a cult."
— Raw Story (@rawstory.com) 2026-06-22T16:30:04Z
https://www.rawstory.com/tulsi-gabbard-cult-ms-now
Gabbard recently stepped down as President Donald Trump's director of national intelligence after serving as a Democratic congresswoman, but the Washington Post reported over the weekend that that she has been guided every step of the way by eccentric religious leader Chris Butler, head of a Hare Krishna breakaway group called the Science of Identity Foundation.
"Some people call it a cult," Scarborough said.
A former member of the group provided Post reporter Jonathan Swaine with thousands of emails and documents that revealed Butler's advisory role to Gabbard, who had been asked about her relationship with the guru during her confirmation hearings.
"Dozens of attached memos appeared to document directives and advice for Gabbard from her time in Congress," Swaine reported. "Some contained instructions on what legislation she should propose, which policies she should embrace, and how she should conduct herself on television. They had an air of authority."
The reporter compared Gabbard's remarks in 32 television interviews between 2014 and 2016 and found she used language that was nearly verbatim to Butler's talking points memos, and Scarborough was stunned.
"It is a Hare Krishna-styled group that many people have compared to a cult," he said. "People don't suggest that being in a Hare Krishna group is the same as being in a cult, but in this case, when you have something that may be a spinoff of that and a cult-like leader advising members of Congress how to speak, how to, how to put forward legislation, how how to style their hair. There's a problem here."
yellow dahlia
(6,888 posts)I was critical of her during the run up to the 2020 primary.