A former congresswoman of Hawaii and 2020 Democratic presidential aspirant, Tulsi Gabbard, announced Tuesday that she was leaving the party she described as an “elitist cabal of warmongers” and invited “common sense independent-minded” members of the party to join her if they, as she, “can no longer stomach the direction that so-called woke Democratic Party ideologues are taking our country.”

In a video statement posted online, the first Hindu ever to serve in the House of Representatives and a former vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee gave no indication where exactly she was going or what she would do, but said she can no longer stomach the turn that today’s Democratic Party has taken.

The announcement came conveniently on the same day she launched a new podcast, the “Tulsi Gabbard Show,” described as an interview show with guests from across the political spectrum. The production presumably replaces the podcast she started in January 2021, “This is Tulsi Gabbard.”

Democrats responded to the news with guffaws, with many expressing surprise that she still called herself a Democrat. Since leaving Congress in 2021, the Iraq war veteran has been a staple on Fox News’s right-wing prime time shows and even guest-hosted the “Tucker Carlson Tonight” show at one point. In 2022, much to the chagrin of her fellow Democrats in Hawaii, she spoke at the Conversative Political Action Conference.

In her announcement, Ms. Gabbard said she joined the Democratic Party in her 20s because she was inspired by its opposition to the war in Vietnam, its advocacy for Hawaii’s plantation workers, and the ideals of a big-tent party that stood up for working men and women. Republicans at the time, she said, seemed more interested in big business and “warmongering elites.”

“So I became a Democrat and remained one for over 20 years — an independent Democrat to be sure, but a Democrat nonetheless,” she said. 

Today’s Democratic Party, however, has drifted far from those ideals, she said. It “is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue and stoke anti-white racism.”

Ms. Gabbard said the party is actively working to undermine constitutional rights, is hostile to people of faith and spirituality, demonizes police, and coddles criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans. It has, she said, weaponized the national security state to go after political opponents, and is dragging the country ever closer to nuclear war.

In the 30-minute screed, Ms. Gabbard criticized the party for “turning our democracy into a banana republic” by using the IRS to target political opponents, the justice department to target parents of schoolchildren, and Big Tech to censor free speech. She also accused the party of “actively undermining our religious freedom” and Second Amendment rights.

The party, she said, “foments anti-white racism,” “erases women” by denying the male-female biological dichotomy, and undermines parents for the benefit of teachers’ unions. Ms. Gabbard promised to delve into all these issues in more depth in the coming weeks.

“I believe in a government that is of the people, by the people, and for the people,” she said. “Unfortunately, today’s Democratic Party does not. Instead, it stands for a government of, by, and for the powerful elite.”