Tulsi Gabbard

And so I went through that list every morning looking to see if there were any of our soldiers who had been killed.

hit and injured the day before.

And, you know, comms are not always great.

We didn't always know who are, where are they?

Are they getting the care they needed?

And so I was tracking them down, figuring out what was going on.

What did they need?

Were they getting the care that they needed?

Did they need to be evacuated immediately so that I couldn't, you know, make things happen and inform our commander of, you know, every single by name one of our troops was going on.

And, you know...

It's hard to express in words, both for the friends of mine who I saw on that list, but for every single person, every single name, every single American on that list.

in the most real and human way, understanding the cost of war.

And so coming back from that deployment, people were like, oh, you should just go back to your job in the state legislature, pick up the life, you got a bright political future ahead of you.

I couldn't do that.

I couldn't do it.

And so I didn't know what was next.

I started looking at different positions, different jobs, like let me figure out where and how I can somehow be in a position of influence, where I can take this experience I had had and if I can't be a policymaker right now, then help inform someone who is.

Long story short, I ended up working as a legislative aide for U.S.

Senator Akaka from Hawaii, who was the chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee at the time.

And I was able to provide him with like, you know, you'd get the high up people from the VA coming and giving him these fancy presentations about here's all the great things we're doing.