RUTHFULLY YOURS

Of all the Democratic presidential candidates, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard may most defy easy categorization. She fuses appeals to national honor—drawn from her Army service in Iraq—with resolutely left-wing policy prescriptions, especially on foreign affairs. Yet she appears frequently on Fox News, has earned plaudits from Republican colleagues, and staunchly opposes impeachment proceedings against President Trump, which she warns would “tear the country apart.”

“The whole reason the Mueller investigation started was to investigate collusion,” she said in an interview between recent campaign stops in Manhattan. The special counsel “was very clear in his report that there was no evidence found that collusion took place.” But she is at pains to distinguish her reasoning from that of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, whose reticence about impeachment, Ms. Gabbard says, is rooted in partisan calculation: “That’s exactly what people are sick and tired of.”

Ms. Gabbard, who represents Hawaii’s Second District, also doesn’t belabor her sex, her ethnic background (Samoan) or her religion (Hindu). “I think identity politics, again, is one of those things that is unfortunately being used to divide us. . . . [it’s] a dangerous road to walk down,” Ms. Gabbard told me in a podcast interview, lamenting fellow Democrats and the media for often treating Americans “as though we are the sum of the color of our skin.”

Since she launched her campaign in January, liberal media outlets have scorned her. NBC News published an article alleging that she had the backing of “Russia’s propaganda machine.” The Daily Beast charged that she was being “boosted by Putin apologists.”

But she’s found support from a popular alternative-media figure, Joe Rogan, who has hosted Ms. Gabbard twice on his video and audio podcast—consistently a top-ranked offering on YouTube and iTunes. Like Ms. Gabbard, Mr. Rogan is politically heterodox. He’s endorsed libertarian Republican Ron Paul, shuns ideological labels, and has a following among right-leaning listeners.

Perhaps because of her reliance on alternative media, Ms. Gabbard is unusually sympathetic to conservatives who complain of social-media censorship. Asked about YouTube’s penalization of right-wing personality Steven Crowder, Ms. Gabbard says: “I think it points to the dangerous level of power that these platforms have, and how they can seemingly arbitrarily make their own rules, and make decisions about what kind of free speech is acceptable.” It amounts to a kind of monopoly, she argues: “If you get cut out from YouTube, there’s nowhere else you’re going to be able to go.”

Mr. Rogan’s support has paid off. “There were people there today who said they were there because they saw me on Joe Rogan,” Ms. Gabbard says of her New York stops. “There are a lot of folks who are not typical Democratic primary voters who are now going to be Democratic primary voters.”