In the run-up to her 2020 presidential campaign entry, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard was forced to deliver a video apology for past anti-gay views, and defend her recent visit with Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad. Despite how her past generated significant backlash within the Democratic Party, she begins her 2020 quest by portraying herself as a national healer, one who will eschew foreign military intervention.
In the soaring and slick 82-second video, "For the Country We Love," Tulsi is seemingly everywhere, at a refugee camp, at a military cemetery, in a chopper, at a wildfire, as well as consoling and laughing with voters.
She narrates, warning that "divisiveness is being fomented by those wishing to tear us apart" and rhetorically asking "where is the conversation about peace?"
After a quick shot of the Pentagon, she says, "Every time we launch these interventionist regime change wars, it is not only our veterans who pay the price for that ... we have spent trillions of your taxpayer dollars to pay for these wars, taking those dollars away from our communities..."
Leaning on her Hawaiian background, she ushers a call for grassroots unity: "It takes every single one of our hands, our hearts and our voices, motivated by this love and aloha, to take on those forces and those obstacles that can seem too great to overcome." As the orchestra music swells to a crescendo, she declares, "There is no force more powerful than love."
It's a powerful spot,, but it may not be powerful enough to drown out the criticism buffeting her nascent campaign.
In the soaring and slick 82-second video, "For the Country We Love," Tulsi is seemingly everywhere, at a refugee camp, at a military cemetery, in a chopper, at a wildfire, as well as consoling and laughing with voters.
She narrates, warning that "divisiveness is being fomented by those wishing to tear us apart" and rhetorically asking "where is the conversation about peace?"
After a quick shot of the Pentagon, she says, "Every time we launch these interventionist regime change wars, it is not only our veterans who pay the price for that ... we have spent trillions of your taxpayer dollars to pay for these wars, taking those dollars away from our communities..."
Leaning on her Hawaiian background, she ushers a call for grassroots unity: "It takes every single one of our hands, our hearts and our voices, motivated by this love and aloha, to take on those forces and those obstacles that can seem too great to overcome." As the orchestra music swells to a crescendo, she declares, "There is no force more powerful than love."
It's a powerful spot,, but it may not be powerful enough to drown out the criticism buffeting her nascent campaign.