[5][6] Had she won, she would have become the first female, Hindu, and Samoan president in American history, and the youngest person to ever hold the office.

[11][12] On October 19, 2018, Politico reported that Gabbard was "weighing a 2020 presidential bid" but would not make an announcement until after the 2018 midterm elections.

[14] On January 11, 2019, in an interview with CNN's Van Jones, Gabbard confirmed her intention to seek the Democratic presidential nomination.

[16] Glenn Greenwald criticized NBC for relying on a firm that had previously tried to imitate "an elaborate 'false flag' operation" that would plant the idea that Alabama Senatorial candidate Roy Moore was being supported by a "Russian botnet".

The Boston Globe's Joe Battenfeld wrote that Gabbard and several other low-polling candidates "never had much of a chance" to qualify because of the low number of DNC-certified polls after the November debate.

The DNC rejected the request by noting that candidates had a chance to give their feedback on the process before it was adopted and "not one campaign objected" to it.

[42][43][44] A DNC spokesperson stated, "Whoever is on the path of getting those delegates, we made sure we had a criterion that is fair and to make sure that people who are viable for the presidency and for the nomination are going to be on that.

By January 26, 2020, the campaign had met the DNC's 225,000 individual donors qualifying criterion for participating in the first February 2020 debate, though she failed to reach the polling criteria.

[52] A study by Axios found that at end of August 2019, Gabbard was the 14th-most-mentioned candidate in cable news coverage even though she was polling in ninth place nationally.

[54] The Hill's Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti both described Gabbard as "the most unfairly maligned person in Washington".

"[65] In an October 12, 2019 article in The New York Times, correspondent Lisa Lerer reported that unnamed members of the Democratic Party had unspecified concerns "about supportive signs from online bot activity and the Russian news media" for Tulsi Gabbard, who was at the time seeking the party's nomination in the 2020 United States presidential election.

[66] Lerer also reported that the unspecified concerns were dismissed by Gabbard's supporters who considered them to be a conspiracy theory "designed to delegitimize her campaign and her foreign policy views".

[71][72] That afternoon, Gabbard reacted to the widespread media reports by condemning Clinton's remarks in a series of Tweets.

[72] Several of her 2020 Democratic primary contenders defended Gabbard, including Bernie Sanders who tweeted "it is outrageous for anyone to suggest that Tulsi is a foreign asset".

[79] The Nation's James Carden compared the insinuations by Clinton and some establishment journalists against Gabbard with similar events involving other politicians and opined that these insinuations were part of what he felt was a long campaign of demonization and vilification against critics of the establishment consensus regarding Russia, and showed that McCarthyism had gone mainstream.

[80] Gabbard thanked Clinton on Twitter for "com[ing] out from behind the curtain" of what she called "a concerted campaign to destroy [her] reputation".

[86] CNN's Dan Merica and New York's Ed Kilgore suggested that the lawsuit is a stunt to gain Gabbard publicity.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in March 2020, ruling that Google, as a private company, is not a state actor subject to the First Amendment.

[90][91] In a poll conducted between July 9 and 18 of registered Democrats in New Hampshire, Gabbard and former Representative Beto O'Rourke were tied in sixth place at 2%.

[95] Gabbard received 4% in the early primary states subset of two non-qualifying Morning Consult national polls from August 25[96] and September 1.

Of the Super Tuesday primaries in the contiguous states, Gabbard received her highest percentage in Oklahoma, where she won 1.7% of the votes.

[111][112] Following the suspension of the campaigns of all the Democratic Party candidates except Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders by early March 2020, Gabbard became the only woman or person of color still in the presidential race.

She told ABC News she was staying in the race because it is "an opportunity to speak to Americans every single day about the sea change we need in our foreign policy.

[114][115][116] After Gabbard's withdrawal from the race,[114] she received several results that were higher than her contiguous Super Tuesday peak of 1.7% in Oklahoma.

[122] Gabbard, who is of Samoan descent and 26% Southeast Asian[123][124] became the second woman of color (after Shirley Chisholm) and the first Asian-American and Pacific-Islander (AAPI) presidential candidate to earn major party primary delegates.