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

[LetMyPeopleVote]

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."

[mwmisses4289]

1. But didn't this come out when she first ran as a supposed Dem?

Iirc, people who brought this up were basically told to sit down and shut up, she's just what the dems needed at the time. Turns out the ones who brought this up were correct.

[PatSeg]

3. I vaguely remember mention of it back then

It still blows my mind that more didn't come out at the time or since.

[Crowman2009]

6. Yep, and I'm one of them who brought it up!

Especially the homophobia coming from her Krishna sect.

[travelingthrulife]

8. Yup. I remember this very clearly when she was running as a Democrat.

[superpatriotman]

2. I don't care about Hare Krishna

Release the Trump/Epstein files

[sop]

4. I've read numerous postings on other sites alleging Chris Butler has extensive ties to both Russia and China,

and believes Russia's model is how things should be done here. These are unsourced internet postings, but Butler's alleged foreign ties raise a lot of questions. I hope someone investigates this further.

[Ocelot II]

5. Direct link to WaPo article:

https://archive.is/8lUOu

[NoRethugFriends]

7. Well, I've only known about this for 9 years! (see below)

The New Yorker first published an article examining Tulsi Gabbard’s ties to Chris Butler and the Science of Identity Foundation in October 2017