The feud between Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has quickly caused a divide in the Democratic Party between the establishment partisans and the principled believers.
Over at CNN, none other than left-wing commentator Van Jones came to Gabbard’s defense in the wake of Clinton referring to her as a “favorite of the Russians,” arguing that the former first lady is playing a “very dangerous game.”
“If you’re concerned about disinformation … that is what just happened, just throw out some information, disinformation, smear somebody,” Jones said, as reported by the Washington Examiner. “She is Hillary Clinton. She’s a legend. She’s going to be in the history books. She’s a former nominee of our party, and she just came out against a sitting U.S. congresswoman, a decorated war veteran, and somebody who’s running for the nomination of our party with just a complete smear and no facts.”
Jones added that he is deeply disappointed in Hillary Clinton for “playing right into the Russians’ hands.”
The feud between Gabbard and Hillary erupted into a social media firestorm on Friday when the former first lady said that Russia is grooming Gabbard for a third-party run during an appearance on the podcast “Campaign HQ.”
“I think they have got their eye on someone who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate. She is the favorite of the Russians,” Clinton said. “They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”
“That’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset. Yeah, she’s a Russian asset — I mean, totally,” she continued. “They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate. So I don’t know who it’s going to be, but I will guarantee you they will have a vigorous third-party challenge in the key states that they most needed.”
Refusing to toe the party line that suggests kissing the power ring of establishment cronies in order to get ahead, Gabbard immediately took to Twitter to blast Clinton as “the queen of warmongers.”
“Great! Thank you [Hillary Clinton],” Gabbard said. “You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain.”
“From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why,” she continued. “Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose.”
Van Jones is not the only prominent Democrat to defend Tulsi Gabbard against Hillary’s smear campaign. Jumping into the fray on Saturday was former MSNBC host Krystal Ball, who agreed with some of Gabbard’s points about warmongering.
“One served as an Iraq War Medic mending and caring for her wounded brothers and sisters,” wrote Ball. “The other was an integral part of sending our brothers and sisters off to fight and die in a war with catastrophic consequences for our nation and the world. One calls out the immoral Saudi regime and the unprincipled nature of our transactional ‘alliance’ with them. The other is happy to take $10 million from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia into her family foundation.”