“How many, total, are there? What is it, 600?”
That was Green Party presidential nominee Jill Stein’s answer when asked how many House members are in Congress. It’s 435.
But you know what legislature has around 600 members? Russia’s. Her answer is a fitting response since she continues to do Russia’s dirty work by eating into Democrats’ margins on the left and bolstering yet another Donald Trump candidacy.
There are myriad reasons 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton lost to Trump, and Stein is likely one of them. Clinton lost Pennsylvania by around 44,000 votes, while Stein garnered about 50,000. Clinton lost Wisconsin by roughly 23,000 votes, Stein got just over 31,000. Clinton lost Michigan by less than 11,000, Stein got more than 51,000.
Of course, nothing suggests a Stein vote would have otherwise been a lock for Clinton, and Trump lost more votes to the Libertarian candidate, but Stein was certainly a contributing factor to Clinton’s loss. She vociferously argued that Clinton would be far more dangerous than Trump, saying, “Donald Trump, I think, will have a lot of trouble moving things through Congress. Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, won’t. … Hillary has the potential to do a whole lot more damage, get us into more wars faster, to pass her fracking disastrous climate program, much more easily than Donald Trump could do his.”
Turns out, Trump didn’t need to move much through Congress to have a disastrous effect on the country. His unserious handling of the COVID-19 pandemic almost certainly cost thousands of Americans their lives. Yet, despite all that happened after Trump’s win, Stein remained unapologetic.
That makes sense, however, given that getting Trump elected may very well have been the point of her presidential run. We all know just how secretive and protective Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is, so the picture below is noteworthy.
The photo was taken in December 2015, when Stein joined Putin at dinner celebrating the 10th anniversary of Russian propaganda outlet RT. Joining them at their table were retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, who would go on to become a Trump national security adviser and, even later, to plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with a Russian diplomat. Flynn was paid $45,000 by the Russians to speak at the event depicted in the photo. Stein also spoke.
Seated to Stein’s left in the photo was Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s spokesman, and the table also included Putin’s chief of staff and deputy chief of staff. It was an all-star table, with Stein smiling and apparently happy to bask in the presence of the murderous madman, fresh off his deadly seizure of Crimea and the Donbas in Ukraine. It was true to form for Stein, who is also an apologist for Syria’s mass-murdering dictator Bashar al-Assad.
To this very day, Stein is still unable or unwilling to criticize Putin.
Watch the clip and marvel at Stein's unraveling as she claims that criticizing a foreign leader was somehow unseemly as a presidential candidate despite her comfort about calling Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal. Host Mehdi Hasan didn’t let her get away with it, making it clear that either she could criticize both as war criminals, or neither if it was somehow against the rules to criticize foreign leaders (a ridiculous assertion in its own right).
The bottom line here is that she went to embarrassing pains to ensure the words “Putin is a war criminal” never passed her lips despite that Putin has quite literally been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
What’s lost in all of this is what the Green Party is supposed to be doing: building power and credibility. The progressive Working Families Party has managed to do just that by building at the grassroots level. Even the Democratic Socialists of America managed to help get a handful of members to Congress elected before its recent self-destruction. Stein’s Green Party isn’t even pretending, though. It seems to prefer to remain a vehicle for Stein’s kamikaze presidential runs, all in service to Putin and the Republican Party.
On the popular podcast “The Breakfast Club,” Stein attempted to attack Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for “taking her marching orders from the [Democratic National Committee],” to which the show’s host shot back, “The one thing AOC has done that you haven’t is win some elections.”
Ocasio-Cortez piled on as well, saying, “Nobody needs talking points to know Jill Stein hasn’t won so much as a bingo game in the last decade and if you actually give a damn about people, you organize, build power and infrastructure, and win.”
She expanded on those thoughts in an Instagram video:
Y’all, this is a little spicy, but I have thoughts. … What I have a problem with is the fact that if you’re running for president, you are the de facto leader of your party. And first of all—trust me on this—I’ve run as a third-party candidate in New York. I’ve also run as a Working Families Party candidate in addition to running as a Democrat because, trust me, I’ve been on record about my criticisms of a two-party system, so this is not about that.
But you are the leader of your party, and if you run for years and years and years and years in a row, and your party has not grown, and you don’t add city council seats, and you don’t add downballot candidates, and you don’t add state electeds, that’s bad leadership.
And that to me is what is upsetting. Because if you have been your party’s nominee for 12 years in a row—four years ago and four years before that and four years before that—and you cannot grow your movement pretty much at all, and can’t pursue any successful strategy, and all you do is show up once every four years to speak to people who are justifiably pissed off, but you’re just showing up once every four years to do that, you’re not serious. ... To me, it does not read as authentic, it reads as predatory.
The Green Party isn’t growing under Stein. At the end of 2022, 234,120 people were registered as Green Party members, or 0.19% of all Americans. (Remember that when Stein and her lackeys cry about their lack of media attention or access to the debates.) But in 2004, there were 298,701 Greens, meaning that Stein’s party is moving backward despite population growth and the rise of alternative media outlets.
The DNC is also clapped back at Stein as well.
“Jill Stein is a useful idiot for Russia. After parroting Kremlin talking points and being propped up by bad actors in 2016 she’s at it again,” DNC spokesman Matt Corridoni told The Bulwark. “Jill Stein won’t become president, but her spoiler candidacy—that both the GOP and Putin have previously shown interest in—can help decide who wins. A vote for Stein is a vote for Trump.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, with his impeccable progressive credentials, has been equally harsh on Stein, tweeting, “She shows up every 4 years making lavish promises but has no record of producing anything except Republican victories.”
For a lot of Stein’s supporters, that is literally the point. And honestly, there’s not much any of us can do about that crowd. They are as lost to reason as most Trump supporters.
But any leftist who thinks they’re voting for Stein out of some earnest desire not to sully themselves with the taint of practical politics are being conned by Stein—and Putin.
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