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

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."

Swaine spent a year digging into the documents and reporting on their significance, and "Morning Joe" co-host Jonathan Lemire said the findings raised important questions.

"The endgame of these instructions not quite clear, but Tulsi Gabbard has always been sort of a mysterious figure," Lemire said. "Her politics have sort of been – she's been a shapeshifter. She ran for president as a Democrat not that long ago, and now, of course, she serves, you know, up until Friday, in the Trump administration, and certainly she had fallen out of favor with Trump and, you know, we certainly wish her and her family well. Her husband is battling cancer, it's a pretty devastating diagnosis."

"But we also know from reporting that the Trump administration was looking to move on from her soon anyway," Lemire added, "and why reading this here, and especially with you mentioned, Mika, read the piece about the her words being almost verbatim from these instructions that the this leader Butler often spoke to her really tough language, sometimes like very demeaning sort of rhetoric to her, a member of Congress. Yeah, it raises all sorts of questions as to her background and to what actually was the goal here, you know, in this relationship."

"Yeah," Brzezinski agreed, "very concerning."

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