Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, hit back at Hillary Clinton on Friday, thanking her for suggesting that Russia was grooming her for a third-party run presidential next year and challenging her to not "cowardly hide behind your proxies" and "join the race directly."

"Great! Thank you @HillaryClinton," Gabbard, in her fourth term, said in the first of three Twitter posts. "You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain."From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation," she said in the second post. "We wondered who was behind it and why.

"Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine, afraid of the threat I pose," Gabbard said in the third tweet.

"It's now clear that this primary is between you and me," she challenged. "Don't cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly."

In a Campaign HQ podcast, Clinton, who lost the 2016 election to Republican Donald Trump, suggested that the Kremlin was grooming Gabbard to run as a third-party candidate in 2020 and argued that 2016 Green Party nominee Jill Stein was a "Russian asset."

Clinton was interviewed by David Plouffe, former President Barack Obama's campaign manager, and her comments were reported by The Washington Post.

"I'm not making any predictions," Clinton began, "but I think they've got their eye on someone who's currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate.

"She's the favorite of the Russians."

Gabbard, an Army National Guard member who has served in Iraq, came under fire for meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2017 and for defending Russian military operations in Syria.

She also slammed a report suggesting that Russian election meddling in the 2016 presidential was no worse than America's historically.