Anti-interventionist Democrat Tulsi Gabbard is ending her 2020 presidential campaign.

“After Tuesday’s election, it's clear that Democratic primary voters have chosen Vice President Joe Biden to be the person who will take on President Trump in the general election,” Gabbard said Thursday. “Today, I’m suspending my presidential campaign and offering my full support to Vice President Joe Biden in his quest to bring our country together.”





Gabbard, 38, a Hawaiian congresswoman and Iraq War veteran, centered her campaign on combating a "new Cold War" and U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. A member of the Hawaii Army National Guard, she took a break from campaigning for two weeks in August for active-duty training.

She indicated that the coronavirus pandemic contributed to her decision to end her campaign. “The best way I can be of service at this time is to continue to work for the health and well-being of the people of Hawaii and our country in Congress and to stand ready to serve in uniform should the Hawaii National Guard be activated,” Gabbard said.

The exit from the race comes after Tuesday primaries left Gabbard with no mathematical way to secure the 1,991 nominating delegates needed to win the Democratic presidential nomination on the first ballot in July's Democratic National Convention. She won only two delegates from American Samoa, where she was born. Gabbard previously said that she would take her campaign to the convention no matter what.

Gabbard made a splash in Democratic presidential debates. In the first round, she criticized competitor Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan for arguing in favor of keeping a U.S. presence in Afghanistan and corrected him for saying that the Taliban attacked the United States on 9/11. On the stage in July 2019, Gabbard took aim at California Sen. Kamala Harris’s record as a prosecutor.

“She put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana,” Gabbard said of Harris.

Critics railed against Gabbard for her stance on Syrian dictator Bashar Assad. Harris called her an “Assad apologist.” In 2017, Gabbard met with Assad and later expressed skepticism that he had ordered a chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians. She has since called Assad a "brutal dictator."

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in October suggested that Gabbard was being "groomed" by Russia or the Republicans to run as a third-party spoiler candidate and appeared to suggest that Gabbard was a "Russian asset." Gabbard responded to Clinton in part by calling her "the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long."

Gabbard, who repeatedly said she would not run as a third-party candidate and would endorse the Democratic presidential nominee, in January filed a $50 million defamation lawsuit against Clinton.

The Hawaii representative also sued Google for allegedly temporarily suspending her ability to buy online ads. A federal judge dismissed that lawsuit in early March.

Gabbard announced in October that she would not seek reelection to her House seat in 2020. She faced a primary challenge from Democratic Hawaii state Sen. Kai Kahele, who has criticized her for focusing on national politics rather than her district.