Hillary Clinton Suggests Russians Are “Grooming” Tulsi Gabbard to Run as Third-Party Candidate

by Christopher Rudolph

14h ago

Are the Russians “grooming” Tulsi Gabbard to be a third-party candidate in next year’s presidential election? That’s what Hillary Clinton seemed to suggest on the latest episode of former Obama advisor David Plouffe’s podcast, Campaign HQ.

“I’m not making any predictions, but I think they’ve got their eye on someone who’s currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” Clinton said during the interview, without naming exactly who she meant.

“She’s the favorite of the Russians,” Clinton added. “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. They know they can’t win without a third-party candidate.”

As NewNowNext previously reported, before running for office, Gabbard worked for her father’s anti-gay marriage PAC, the Alliance for Traditional Marriage, that worked to pass an amendment to the state’s constitution that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

The group also promoted so-called conversion therapy, claiming the debunked practice could change a person’s sexual orientation, even going so far as to claim “there is no such thing as a homosexual or ’gay.’”

In an interview with CNN, Gabbard said she would not run as a third-party candidate: “I will not. No, I have ruled that out.”

According to The New York Times, the Hawaiian Democrat’s poll numbers in qualifying national and state polls “have hovered between 0% and 2%.”

When asked if Clinton was insinuating Gabbard, Clinton’s spokesman Nick Merrill told CNN’s Dan Merica, “If the nesting doll fits.”