A recent Iowa poll qualified Democratic presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard for the November debate, Politico reports. The news comes in the wake of former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton appearing to accuse Gabbard of being a Russian asset , which led to a backlash from many public figures as well as what seems to be a boost in polling numbers.
Niko House, one of Gabbard’s top online fundraisers and founder of MCSC Network, took to Twitter to claim he wants to thank the former Secretary of State for the Hawaii Representative’s recent achievement.
“Anyone have Hillary’s address? I said we’d need to send her a thank u letter if her horrible political calculation of smearing Tulsi ended up getting Tulsi into the debates…and here we are.”
The 38-year-old congresswoman hit 3 percent in the new Quinnipiac poll, which marks the fourth DNC-approved poll that she has hit 3 percent or higher. She previously hit the second debate requirement of 165,000 donors and will now take the stage alongside nine other candidates: Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, Kamala Harris, Andrew Yang, Cory Booker, Amy Klobuchar, and Tom Steyer.
House has been vocal about his support of Gabbard as well as other topics in the political realm — he previously suggested that Warren paid for her standing ovation at the New Hampshire Democratic Party in September.
“How is that genuine support?” he asked during one of his podcasts.
Whether House will actually send a thank you to Clinton remains to be seen, but it appears that Gabbard may have benefitted from Clinton’s attacks.
Following the accusation, Gabbard attacked Clinton multiple times, including in a Wall Street Journal op-ed in which she blasted Clinton’s purported foreign policy failures.
“I’m running for president to undo Mrs. Clinton’s failed legacy. From Iraq to Libya to Syria, her record is replete with foreign-policy catastrophes,” she wrote.
“It’s a primary reason why I resigned as vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 2016 to endorse Bernie Sanders,” Gabbard continued, adding that the recent attacks on her character are due to Clinton and the “powerful media and political network” she built being unable to forgive Gabbard for leaving the DNC.
Gabbard also took a hit at the other Democratic candidates, although she did not name which ones. She claimed that Clinton’s approach to foreign policy mirrors that of some of the current candidates that continue to push for regime change wars using taxpayer dollars, in turn causing “suffering and destruction” around the world and “undermining America’s security.”