Tulsi Gabbard being challenged on The View (2/20/19) by Ana Navarro: “Why are you so against intervention in Venezuela?”
Presidential hopeful Tulsi Gabbard has not garnered much press coverage since announcing her bid on February 2; she’s the 13th-most-mentioned Democratic candidate on TV news, according to FAIR’s most recent count (4/14/19).
But when corporate media do talk about the Hawaii congressmember, they tend to reveal more about themselves than about her.
A veteran of the Iraq War, Gabbard is centering her presidential campaign around anti-interventionism (2/3/19): the belief that US interference in foreign countries, especially in the form of regime-change wars, increases the suffering of the citizens in those countries.
When corporate outlets talk about this anti-interventionist position, they primarily use it to negatively characterize the candidates who espouse it. Few in establishment media seem interested in going any deeper or considering the veracity of arguments raised by anti-interventionists.
The Washington Post (1/15/19) listed Gabbard’s anti-interventionism as a factor that hurts her electability in a video titled, “Why Some See Tulsi Gabbard as a Controversial 2020 Candidate.” Part of the video’s explanation: “The congresswoman has raised concern among Democrats in the past when she criticized Obama’s strategy on Iran, ISIS and Syria.”
CBS News (2/4/19) briefly interviewed Honolulu Civil Beats reporter Nick Grube regarding Gabbard’s campaign announcement. The anchors had clearly never encountered the term anti-interventionism before, struggling to even pronounce the word, then laughing and saying it “doesn’t roll off the tongue.” When asked to define the candidate’s position, Grube equated it to President Trump’s foreign policy. But “America First” rallying cries aside, it hardly seems accurate to call Trump an anti-interventionist, given his administration’s regime change efforts in Venezuela, his unilateral reimposition of sanctions on Iran (FAIR.org, 5/2/19) and his escalation of the drone wars (Daily Beast, 11/25/18).
When Gabbard appears on talkshows, she is typically on the receiving end of baseless questions coated in assumptions of military altruism. Gabbard appeared on ABC’s The View (2/20/19) and articulated her argument that US intervention does more harm than good to the people purportedly being helped. Rather than respond to any of the points she raised, however, the hosts resorted to the kinds of shallow questions that have been supporting interventionism for decades.
Sunny Hostin asked, “So should we not get involved when we see atrocities abroad?” Fellow panelist Ana Navarro elaborated:
I’m very troubled by the tweets about Venezuela that you’ve put out…. [Maduro] is not allowing humanitarian aid, he is a thug, he is a dictator, he is corrupt. And I am very supportive of what the United States is doing right now…. Why are you so against intervention in Venezuela?
Tulsi Gabbard being asked by CBS‘s Stephen Colbert (3/11/19) why she doesn’t see the US as a “force for good in the world.”
On CBS’s Late Show With Stephen Colbert (3/11/19), the host resorted to old-fashioned American exceptionalism and Cold War–style paranoia to counter the congressmember:
Nature abhors a vacuum. If we are not involved in international conflicts, or trying to quell international conflicts, certainly the Russians and the Chinese will fill that vacuum…. That might destabilize the world, because the United States, however flawed, is a force for good in the world, in my opinion.
Comments like these may seem harmless; why not, after all, fight “atrocities”? In fact, they contain the same language that media have used for decades to justify interventionism and quiet dissenters.
Colbert’s exceptionalism argument, in particular, is reminiscent of the centuries-old vision of the US as a “shining city upon a hill.” It’s also a frame historically employed by media to rationalize the country’s foreign policy. As communications scholar Andrew Rojecki wrote in his 2008 research article (Political Communication, 2/4/08) on elite commentary of George W. Bush’s military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, “Over the course of the two crises, American exceptionalist themes made up a constant background presence in elite commentary and opinion.”
In other words, the assurance that Colbert has that the US has been “a force for good in the world” has paved the way for some of the greatest disasters of the modern world, including the 17-year-old war in Afghanistan (or almost 40 years, if you date from the US deliberately provoking the 1979 Soviet intervention) and the half-million-plus killed in the Iraq War. Other difficult cases for proponents of intervention include Libya, where removing an authoritarian ruler devastated the nation and brought back slave markets, and Syria, where hawks evade responsibility for the hundreds of thousands killed in a US-backed effort to overthrow the government by pretending that the US has failed to intervene.
Currently, in Venezuela, where Navarro is “very supportive of what the United States is doing,” Washington has imposed sanctions that are blamed for killing 40,000 in the last two years (CEPR, 4/25/19). Meanwhile, the US offers as a publicity stunt a convoy with “humanitarian aid” valued at less than 1 percent of the assets it has blocked Venezuela from spending.
Fox News screenshot from a Washington Post video (1/15/19) titled “Why Some See Tulsi Gabbard as a Controversial 2020 Candidate.”
Another easy to way to discredit anti-war critics is to accuse them of siding with the enemy (FAIR.org, 4/1/06). So it’s not much of a surprise that when Gabbard gets mentioned in establishment news, a comment about her meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is usually soon to follow.
Gabbard traveled to Syria in 2017, on what her office called a “fact-finding mission.” During her trip, she met and spoke with al-Assad, prompting the media to question her loyalties ever since, equating her meeting to tacit support of his regime. (Gabbard calls Assad a “brutal dictator,” but says US efforts to overthrow his government are “illegal and counterproductive.”)
New York Times columnist Bari Weiss appeared on the popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast (1/21/19) and confidently called Gabbard an “Assad toadie.” When Rogan asked her what “toadie” meant, she couldn’t define the word, asking the show’s producer to look it up for her. (It means “sycophant”).
The New York Times (1/11/19) and Associated Press (Washington Post, 5/2/19) both identified Gabbard’s meeting with Assad as a factor that made her a controversial candidate. In an article about Gabbard’s apparent fall from grace within the Democratic party, Vox (1/17/19) characterized Gabbard’s opposition to the funding of Syrian rebels as “quasi-support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the dictator responsible for the outbreak of the Syrian civil war and the conflict’s worst atrocities.”
Interviewers from MSNBC’s Morning Joe, ABC’s The View, CBS’s Late Show and CNN’s Van Jones Show all asked Gabbard to justify her meeting with Assad, or pressured her to renounce him as an enemy. None were interested in asking even the most basic question of substance, “What did you and Assad talk about during your meeting?” The implication is clear: When it comes to those designated by the state as official enemies, communication is suspect.
So perhaps the simplest explanation for corporate media’s treatment of Gabbard is that she opposes the kind of intervention that they have historically been complicit in.
FAIR (e.g, 4/91, 3/19/07, 8/11) has documented mainstream media’s consistent support for US intervention across the globe. FAIR has also been documenting corporate media’s support for intervention in Venezuela, finding recently that zero percent of elite commentators opposed regime change in that country (4/30/19) and noting corporate media’s harsh admonishment of Bernie Sanders after he tepidly questioned US intervention in Venezuela (3/5/19).
Gabbard’s campaign is just one small piece of a larger phenomenon in the mainstream media: Space for dissenting opinions on the US’s neoliberal, interventionist foreign policies must not be allowed.
Featured image: Tulsi Gabbard on CNN‘s Van Jones Show (1/12/19).
What a great article! Americans are not aware that the Main Stream Media is brainwashing them into consenting for their hard-earned labor tax dollars to pay for death and destruction in other countries. Most people have an intuitive knowledge of this but they chose to fold their hands and resign themselves to the fact that “this is just the way it is” while complaining about lack of healthcare, a crumbling infrastructure and a polluted environment. Tulsi is articulating the inherent connection between bloated military expenditures (over 2/3 of the US discretionary budget) and the lack of resources for the much needed social programs that can help the population at large. Her predecessors, from Eisenhower to Wallace, MLK, MacGovern, JFK, RFK, Ron Paul, Nader, Kucinich, Gravel and the like were all effectively silenced. Today we have the Internet, perhaps the time has come for a true movement for Peace and Prosperity in this country. I believe Tulsi is a fearless and tenacious leader who could make it happen.
The corpress, as much as the state, is an unalloyed pimper of imperialism, but something tells me that word has never crossed Congressmember Gabbard’s lips with any conviction, and that makes their task that much easier.
Citing the War in Afghanistan as the lead example in a list of “some of the greatest disasters of the modern world” is pretty insane hyperbole, if you ask me. Also your shot at Bari Weiss, aside from being irrelevant to the article, is neither fair nor accurate. (She did ask the producer to look up the word, but that was just to confirm the correct definition, which she had uttered seconds earlier.)
Nitpicking aside, good article overall.
Are you saying the 20 year long war in Afghanistan is not a major humanitarian disaster?
I’m saying it’s not “one of the greatest disasters of the modern world.”
Care to back up that denial with some facts?
Bari Weiss is a hack. That’s all that needs to be said about her.
Not sure what you mean by “hack,” other than “person who has opinions I strongly disagree with.” She has some takes I really don’t understand (the hate for Tulsi, the Pro-Israel zealotry), but I roll my eyes at the far left’s palpable vitriol towards her.
Here we go again , “hack” : clumsy, unprofessional, unskilled, ham handed, amateurish…Tendency to merely rewrite state dept. police and pentagon press releases, or any other sources friendly to US govt. or Israeli power and authority instead of getting off ass and reporting. ……..Bari Weiss producer, can you look that up for me ?
Exactly. Bari Weiss’s Joe Rogan experience was a beautiful thing. The Bari Weiss’s in the media are so used to interviewers just nodding along because they have the same views. Rogan simply asked her “What’s a Toadie?” And to see her flail around like a fish outta water was priceless. Bari and her fellow “journalists” have so many smear tactics I guess it’s difficult on their vocabulary skills.
Wow!! You made my heart stop. Very well said. Never seen any reporter put it like this. Bravo!! I am so frustrated with everyone being disrespectful to the real truth Tulsi has brought up. But, MSM is hell-bent on telling the lies on her anyway. Sick and tired of the mainstream, no wonder Trump goes crazy on them. Their lies giving whole democracy a bad name. I wonder how new/future generation gonna process the Truth for. Truth is varying from one news outlet to another. God save media toadies.
When can we have a FAIR and positive discussion in America?
Fantastic article. Thank you.
Tulsi Gabard article 5/8/19
Yes, an excellent article especially considering the general avoidance of either the morality or the devastating consequences of the long history of hundreds of US interventions. But as Doug Latimer points out, Tulsi Gabbard mysteriously avoids mentioning the one term that defines the causes and description of these Wars, launched during most of the US history. Orwell’s 1984 got some things right. Erase the word and thing becomes an un-thought. The forbidden word Tulsi and most educated and well paid commentators carefully avoid is imperialism.
To remain patriotic in the face of all the ugly facts of US history requires pretending the US has never behaved as an Empire. This allows loyal Americans to continue believing in the myths of American exceptionalism and the incredible sumption that the US military, political and economic interventions worldwide are always well-intentioned. These presumptive and righteous excuses were the centerpiece of Ken Burns major series the Vietnam War, and are key to maintaining American public’s ignorant support for the massive killings throughout US history beginning with the murdererous Christopher Columbus and Indian Wars, through the slavery that built the American economic machine, and to the expansion of the present military industrial complex where hundreds of US bases worldwide support the domination that prevents a Green New Deal that might help save our planet.
As in Orwell’s 1984, as long as we are never “imperialistic,” then we can’t be wrong and we must be good. The discomfort of Tulsi Hubbard’s speaking up against intervention suggests why even mentioning the word Imperialism is avoided.
Reblogged: https://politicalfilm.wordpress.com/2019/05/09/corporations-war-on-anti-war/
America is the FORCE of EVIL! This force has no limit when it comes in “dealing” with 3rd World Countries; Sanctions, Regime Change, Drones Bombs etc. Why this BULLY is not so willing to do the same to Russia, China etc.? Poor people do not want “Democracy” as defined by America. All they want is a job so they can support their families. “Demockracy” is what they hear from the Elites. I am from a neighboring Country of Venezuela.
Maybe Colbert should be asking candidates about “American Exceptional Imperialism”?
Owen Walsh landed on Colbert like the interview with Gabbard is the only thing he’s seen of him on TV. I watched the interview and I thought his questions were appropriate, and apparently so did Gabbard. I’ve watched lots of Colbert and I’ve read lots of FAIR articles, and this one seems a little off.
Everytime I’ve ever seen a talking head propagandist try to say “non-intervention” keeps mispronouncing it as “isolationism”.
What Tulsi wants is a blank approval for Putin to engage in endless wars, ethnic cleansing, and even setting up death camps for its LGBTQ population in Southern Russia. As far as I can tell, she cannot even support any non lethal methods to check Putins abuses.
Its increasingly clear that Tulsi is serving Putin, even if he assists Assad as he gasses his own people, as he invades Ukraine and ethnically cleanses it of Tatars, and even as a province in Southern Russia sets up death camps for its LGBTQ population.
Looks like Tulsi has simply contracted out her homophobia to Putin. So woke of her.
Tom in lazy brook do you really want to needlessly antagonize a nuclear-armed country because they aren’t sufficiently promoting homosexuality like America does? Pro war liberals like you want to pick a fight with russsia because they don’t have gay marriage in Crimea.
Theres a full on genocidal pogrom going on in Southern Russia right now, with beatings and killings. Tulsi gives Putin a blank check to commit genocide. Just because someone has nuclear weapons does not give them the right to commit genocide. If you and Tulsis version of peace is the same as impunity for death camps beatings and humiliation for gay people, then count me out of that.
Stating an opinion does not constitute a convincing argument. Your opinion requires verifiable evidence in order to be taken seriously. Without the evidence you are merely spouting an opinion that can be readily received as utter ignorance.
Tulsi refuses to vote against Putin on anything. That is a fact.
Putins government in Southern Russia (chechnya – fully under his control) has set up death camps where gay people are rounded up tortured and killed by Putins state agents. A new pogrom in Southern Russia started up again last week. Tulsi refuses to oppose Putin on anything, including actual death camps.
Her world of peace is really a world of let homophobes commit genocide with impunity.
If you like deathcamps and torture for Gays with complete impunity, Tulsi is your candidate.
Tulsi is serving Putin. Whether its supporting impunity for genocide against Gays, emboldening Assad as he uses poison gas against his own people, or supporting the agit prop agent of Putin, Assaunge, Tulsi is 100% in alignment with Putins campaign of genocide and never ending war.
When has Tulsi advocated any serious sanction for Putin?
Where is the evidence of these alleged death camps? What are your sources? Have you blindly fallen into the false anti-Putin propaganda?
The testimonies of whistleblowers, who have served in the military and security services, indicate a reality quite the opposite to that which you subscribe. It is the USA, NOT Russia, that uses its military and economic power as tools of terror in pursuit of its imperialist ambitions. I suspect that Tulsi is fully aware of this.
Mr Tom in Lazybrook: I think if you substituted America for the word Putin and also said , the Middle East, then that horror that you speak of would make sense. Have you forgotten what America has been doing for the last 18 years?
Whoops! you failed to answer the question..Just provide a link to any half credible site making the claim that these gay death camps of horror actually exist. Just-one-link.
As a non-US citizen who nevertheless enjoys observing US politics at a distance, I have been disgusted at the treatment of Tulsi Gabbard in the media. It seems no more than a coordinated campaign to strangle her nomination bid at birth. Why are they (ie the Democratic Establishment generally) so afraid of her message? I suppose as a non-US citizen I would be better to keep out of this, before the media claim she’s just a shill for foreign interests – unlike the present MAGA incumbent.
The Democratic Establishment is perfectly happy with imperialism and their place within the duopoly of US politics. The center-right corporatists are running the party, and they have no intention of abdicating. That’s why they oppose candidates from their own party, such as Gabbard, who so much as mildly question the imperialist status quo, and it’s why they do all they can to undermine Sanders while simultaneously attempting to exploit his broad reach and popularity. Establishment Dems are perfectly happy giving lip service to the Left as they give cover to the worst impulses of the Right. This posture, apparently, constitutes “enlightened” centrism—AKA neoliberalism with a progressive veneer.
A very useful article. Gabbard handles the ignorance of interviewers with a level of patience and intelligence that only a tiny minority of ‘leaders’, for example, Assad, Lavrov, Putin, display. The mainstream media’s vigorous and relentless efforts to discredit Sanders and Trump backfired in the 2016 presidential election. It is possible that Gabbard will be similarly propelled as the leading candidate in 2020. But in such a scenario she will find, as Sanders did, that her major obstacle is the corrupt and underhand tactics of the Democratic Party elite.
What a great lead-in!! Spend the entire first part of the essay building the evidence and, in the last three paragraphs ‘thrust home’ (as Cyrano said concluding his ‘ballad of the nose duel’. What’s become clearly evident, even as Trump himself says (even a broken clock’s right twice a day), the media is the enemy of the people. It’s only through independent journalists (like FAIR) that people can even hope to glimpse the truth.
Many thanks!!
Tulsi Gabbards point about intervention is unassailable if you accept her point that the people’s suffering increases. Some might make the argument that “in the long run” things will be better. Yes, countries eventually do recover in the long run but relating that to our intervention is a stretch. Does the long run argument hold water in Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq? As the author points out, our intervention in Afghanistan occurred almost forty years ago and resulted in changing a viable state into a failed one. . In Iraq almost thirty years counting the horrendous impact of the sanction in the 90’s.
Colbert’s simple minded and opportunistic statements about our aim is to do good and therefore our intervention and the resultant suffering of the people is OK is repulsive
Colbert is repulsive..Proving that petitbourgeois democrats and their republican pals only care about preserving the status quo, keeping and enlarging their own flabby place in it at any cost..they care only about micro brews and brainlessly woot woot-ing, and U-S-A-ing . A national l disgrace .
Oh SanityClaus: Perhaps you didn’t know —-but the British Empire ended some time ago, and that used -to -be -empire is now following America’s insane lead. Remember when Tony Blair supported GW Bush and his lies which morphed into WMD and destroying Iraq? Yes, for some time now Teresa May—or may -nots—have had their collective nose through a ring and have been pulled into so many dubious situations—-which have nothing to do with Tulsi Gabbard. Sadly, many who interview Tulsi end up showing only their own ignorance. America seems to have reduced much of its population into believing that if you hear it on TV, it must be true. Poor, sad once -upon- a – time democratic republic—–please wake up!
Should it not be InsanityClaus? Or are you Tom in Lazybrook? Or is it that you are smoking stuff you cannot handle? Your opinions are so out of touch with any reality that even the CIA and MI6 would seriously think twice before hiring you.
To quote Elon Musk, “Who owns the press”. No need for a ? Substitute J*#s for media will answer any questions why Tulsi or any anti-war/pro-peace person gets smeared with the usual labels. The press/J$$s started their hit pieces leading up to her announcement and haven’t let up since. The press/J$$s couldn’t risk Tulsi gaining any momentum because she’s witnessed the devastation and actually talked to the citizens of Syria in person who’ve lost loved ones, their homes and any sense stability.
Neo-con/neo-liberal makes no difference because the cast of characters are always the same. Kristol, all the Kagans, you get the picture.
Corporate Media Smears Pro-Peace Candidate Tulsi Gabbard
by Ally Wicks
April 29, 2019
https://medium.com/@allycat0126/corporate-media-smears-pro-peace-candidate-tulsi-gabbard-83e13bbf6844