Tulsi Gabbard

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.

And then I would tell him all that.

Here's what I just went through a few months ago in coming back.

And you know that, you know, they're, oh, we're informing soldiers about all of this and this and that.

I was like, yeah, that was like five slides on a PowerPoint with them saying, you're not allowed to go eat lunch until you watch these slides.

Yeah.

Okay, click, click, click, click, click.

And, you know, is that a value?

No, it's not.

And so being able to bring that real-time experience to him to help better inform what he was doing was my way of, at that time, taking that experience and putting into action.