MaddowBlog-Tulsi Gabbard and Senate GOP face difficult new questions over influence of her 'guru'

[LetMyPeopleVote]

“No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are and where the instructions came from,” Chuck Schumer said. “We need answers.”

As Tulsi Gabbard faces a fresh round of exceedingly difficult questions about the influence of her “guru,” it’s also worth asking the 52 Senate Republicans (including alleged "moderates" like Susan Collins) who ignored every red flag and voted to confirm her to serve as DNI:

Any regrets?

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen.com) 2026-06-23T18:49:58.260Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/tulsi-gabbard-guru-dni

But in case that weren’t quite enough, let’s also not overlook the fact that Gabbard was a member of a secretive Hare Krishna offshoot religious sect that is considered by many of its former members to be an abusive cult.

Gabbard, who wrapped up her tenure as DNI last week, has long insisted that any suggestion that she was somehow enthralled to or controlled by this sect or its leader, whom she has referred to as her “guru,” is just bigotry against her faith.

But it’s against this backdrop that The Washington Post obtained hundreds of secret memos prepared for Gabbard during her congressional tenure, which were put together by members of the alleged cult and which included thousands of pages of specific directives to her on policy and politics.

After careful analysis of thousands of these documents, which have not been independently verified by MS NOW, the Post determined that they likely came from Gabbard’s secretive guru, a man named Chris Butler......

This week, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer spoke on the Senate floor and commented on the reporting:

There are reports that Tulsi Gabbard was receiving instructions from a so-called guru and repeating them word for word. That ought to concern all of us if it’s true. No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are, and where the instructions came from. … We need answers.

.....It stands to reason, for example, that Gabbard has some explaining to do, but I’m also interested in the answers from those who elevated her to an influential intelligence office in the first place.

In February 2025, confronted with an avalanche of reasons to reject Gabbard’s nomination, 52 Senate Republicans — every GOP member except Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell — shrugged off every red flag and voted to confirm her as the nation’s DNI, including so-called “moderates” such as Maine’s Susan Collins and Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski.

The question for these 52 senators seems obvious: Do you regret that confirmation vote and now recognize it as a mistake? Or do you still think it was a good idea to put Gabbard in this influential intelligence position?

[Blue Owl]

1. The whole thing is creepy -- let alone the national security nightmare that has been exposed

[BigmanPigman]

2. I saw this story on the Adam Mockler Podcast 2 days ago

?is=b_Gu6NjXb-kDBRrF

and no one in the main stream media picked it up for over 24 hours. No wonder no one watches broadcast "news" anymore. It's more like broadcast "olds" by the time they decide to report anything.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. 'There's a problem here': MS NOW hosts flabbergasted by Trump official's 'cult' ties

Gabbard was a puppet and obey the instructions of her guru

MS NOW's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski expressed shock over a new report exposing the decades-long influence of Tulsi Gabbard's religious mentor over her political career. "It is a Hare Krishna-styled group that many people have compared to a cult."

— Raw Story (@rawstory.com) 2026-06-22T16:30:04Z

https://www.rawstory.com/tulsi-gabbard-cult-ms-now

MS NOW's Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski expressed shock over a new report exposing the decades-long influence of Tulsi Gabbard's religious mentor over her political career.

Gabbard recently stepped down as President Donald Trump's director of national intelligence after serving as a Democratic congresswoman, but the Washington Post reported over the weekend that that she has been guided every step of the way by eccentric religious leader Chris Butler, head of a Hare Krishna breakaway group called the Science of Identity Foundation.

"Some people call it a cult," Scarborough said.

A former member of the group provided Post reporter Jonathan Swaine with thousands of emails and documents that revealed Butler's advisory role to Gabbard, who had been asked about her relationship with the guru during her confirmation hearings.

"Dozens of attached memos appeared to document directives and advice for Gabbard from her time in Congress," Swaine reported. "Some contained instructions on what legislation she should propose, which policies she should embrace, and how she should conduct herself on television. They had an air of authority."

The reporter compared Gabbard's remarks in 32 television interviews between 2014 and 2016 and found she used language that was nearly verbatim to Butler's talking points memos, and Scarborough was stunned.

"It is a Hare Krishna-styled group that many people have compared to a cult," he said. "People don't suggest that being in a Hare Krishna group is the same as being in a cult, but in this case, when you have something that may be a spinoff of that and a cult-like leader advising members of Congress how to speak, how to, how to put forward legislation, how how to style their hair. There's a problem here."