Jill Stein may not be polling high, but in several states she’s poised to bring in more votes than the margin of error between Harris and Trump. Her campaign events tout that they could cost Harris key states like Michigan, and thus the election. Is this what she wants? A closer look at Stein’s 20 years in politics reveals the Green Party candidate has had little success in elevating left-wing positions, and many of her stances—including a ceasefire in Gaza—aren’t nearly as clear cut as they seem. What’s more, Stein’s presidential runs have been aided and funded by a slew of Trump lawyers and Republican consultants. What’s her game plan here? Is she going to spoil this election? How many metaphors will Max and Erin deploy to describe her hypocrisy? Listen to this week’s “How We Got Here” to find out.

 

TRANSCRIPT

 

Erin Ryan: So I’m looking at these polls from Pennsylvania. And Max, I noticed something. 

 

Max Fisher: You mean something other than the usual existential dread? 

 

Erin Ryan: Yeah. The state is close. Harris is up less than a point. But then there’s this other tab with the numbers for Jill Stein. 

 

Max Fisher: Oh. The Green Party candidate, yeah. 

 

Erin Ryan: She’s getting about 1% in Pennsylvania, so not very much, but– 

 

Max Fisher: Oh, more than the margin of error between Harris and Trump. 

 

Erin Ryan: Wisconsin, same thing. Michigan usually two points for Stein. 

 

Max Fisher: Yeah. You’re worried. Could Jill Stein take enough Kamala votes to put Donald Trump back in the White House? 

 

Erin Ryan: It makes you wonder, is that what Jill Stein wants? Here’s a clip of a Seattle politician named Kshama Sawant introducing Jill Stein at a campaign event in Michigan earlier this week. 

 

[clip of Kshama Sawant] We need to be clear about what our goals are. We are not in a position to win the White House, but we do have a real opportunity to win something historic. We could deny Kamala Harris the state of Michigan, [applause] and the polls show that most likely, Harris cannot win the election without Michigan. 

 

Max Fisher: Erin, help me out. I get that Jill Stein has beef with the Democrats, but it sure sounds like the goal here isn’t to pressure Harris to take more leftwing positions. It sounds like the goal is to get Donald Trump elected, but how does that help any progressive causes? Why is she doing this? 

 

Erin Ryan: In other words, Jill, girlie WID? [music break] I’m Erin Ryan. 

 

Max Fisher: And I’m Max Fisher and this is How We Got Here, a series where we explore a big question behind the week’s headlines and tell a story that answers that question. 

 

Erin Ryan: Our question this week, what does Jill Stein actually stand for in this race, which she could very well help decide for Trump? 

 

Max Fisher: Stein’s message to voters goes something like this. Both parties are, as she puts it in interviews controlled by Wall Street and quote, “very much the same.” So vote for Stein because she represents both a challenge to the two party system and a true progressive alternative to Kamala Harris. 

 

Erin Ryan: But here’s the thing. If you look at Stein’s record, what she’s done and said over the years, you might come away doubting that she really represents the uncompromising, progressive challenge she claims. 

 

Max Fisher: So, Erin, I had not realized until we started putting this episode together that Jill Stein has been running on behalf of the Green Party for 22 years now. And she’s always campaigned less on winning elections than on symbolically fighting the two party system, right? 

 

Erin Ryan: Yes. Here she is during her first ever campaign way back in 2002, for Massachusetts governor. This is from a debate hosted on C-Span. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] The issues before the voters are not simply um being a better bureaucrat or who can be the best money manager. And we’ve had a decade of good money managers and experienced financiers in the governor’s office. We’ve a crisis in health care, a crisis in housing, a declining economy that has shifted to a low wage service economy. Without benefits, workers cannot uh cannot keep their families out of poverty, provide health care. We have urgent issues. And the problem, [?] Republican it’s not Democrats. It’s the stranglehold of big money on our legislature, which has made it impossible for our government to respond to these critical issues. 

 

Max Fisher: So for context, up until 2002, Stein had been an internal medicine physician, and she ran on the idea that neither party was adequately serving public health, which you hear in that clip. 

 

Erin Ryan: Stein took 3.5% in the race. The Republican candidate, none other than Mitt Romney, won with 49%. 

 

Max Fisher: Oh huh. 3.5%. So nowhere close to winning. But presumably, Stein rose through the ranks of the Green Party because she did better and better each time she ran, right?

 

Erin Ryan: Actually, that first 2002 run was Stein’s best performance by far in any three party race. 

 

Max Fisher: Oh. But not best overall?

 

Erin Ryan: Her next race was her best overall. In 2006, she ran for the Massachusetts secretary of the Commonwealth, it’s like secretary of state but in Massachusetts, they insist on calling it Commonwealth. 

 

Max Fisher: They’re such a fancy state. 

 

Erin Ryan: They are difficult people. Uh. Against a Democrat who held the office since 1995, even with no Republican in the race, she got 15%. 

 

Max Fisher: Wow. So her only foray into a two party race and she lost five to one. Woof. 

 

Erin Ryan: In 2010, she ran for governor again and got 1.4%, which is less than half what she’d gotten before. 

 

Max Fisher: Kind of seems like someone on a downward trajectory. 

 

Erin Ryan: This is a consistent criticism you hear from Stein skeptics on the left. They say she’s not actually effective at winning office or at organizing a political party, which she’s good at is getting tiny vote shares in big elections, which raises her personal profile. 

 

Max Fisher: So how did Stein go from a seemingly declining and marginal Green Party figure into the head of the party then? 

 

Erin Ryan: Well, two years later, Stein ran in the primary to become the Green Party’s 2012 presidential nominee. Her opponents were a guy named Kent Mesplay, whose only prior experience was as an air quality inspector. And the actor Roseanne Barr, who, like so many has beens, was a conspiracy theorist on her way to becoming a far right Trump supporter. 

 

Max Fisher: Oh yeah. I suspect that wheat field might have been hangover from the 2000 election. Remember, Al Gore lost Florida by 500 votes, but Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate, won nearly 100,000 votes in Florida. So there was a sense that Nader and the Greens had given us Bush and the Iraq war. 

 

Erin Ryan: And prevented America from having Al Gore. One of the most prominent advocates for the environment at the time in the Oval Office, we could have had almost an extra decade head start in trying to combat fossil fuel emissions. The idea of casting a protest vote for the Green Party suddenly felt reckless. 

 

Max Fisher: Yeah, and selfish. The take away after that 2000 election was okay you want to protest the Democrats on the left, find another way to do it. Because the stakes in a presidential election are too high. 

 

Erin Ryan: After that, the Green Party only got one tenth of 1% in the next two presidential elections in 2004 and 2008. 

 

Max Fisher: Oh. Which was how someone like Stein was able to win that 2012 primary and take over the party because that party was kind of in shambles. 

 

Erin Ryan: When you hear her talk, especially in older clips, you do understand some of the frustration she’s giving voice to. Here she is on C-Span in 2012. And remember, this is four years after the 2008 financial crisis when the economy was still recovering. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] It’s not a coincidence that the 99% is struggling and independent politics is really struggling because the the 1%, you know, the very wealthy, the economic elite, really has hijacked our political system and our policies. And part of what they have been able to do is shut out the voice of everyday people, including through independent, non-corporate parties. 

 

Max Fisher: Yeah, I get it. I mean, people in 2012 definitely resonated with this idea that there was too much money in politics and too much influence from Wall Street. 

 

Erin Ryan: But they did not resonate with the idea that this made the Democrats and Republicans effectively the same. Stein only took one third of 1% of the vote in November. 

 

Max Fisher: Oh so still no appetite for a left wing protest vote. 

 

Erin Ryan: After this, Jill Stein started to sound less like the progressive conscience of the Democratic Party and more like a conspiracy theory crank. 

 

Max Fisher: Oh. This is the Russia stuff, right? 

 

Erin Ryan: Oh. We’ll get to that. But there’s more. In 2015, right wing anti-immigration groups in Britain pushed through a referendum to leave the European Union. 

 

Max Fisher: All right. Brexit, a disaster. 

 

Erin Ryan: Unmitigated disaster. 

 

Erin Ryan: Stein released a statement calling it, quote, “a victory for those who believe in the right of self-determination and who reject the pro-corporate austerity policies of the political elites in the EU.” She said she wanted to, quote, “expand the political movement in the United States.” [laughing] 

 

Max Fisher: Okay. Well, then this was Stein’s one political success, because I am proud to report that the United States is, in fact, not part of the European Union. 

 

Erin Ryan: She’s about 200 years late to claim credit for that one. 

 

Max Fisher: Anyway. Okay. Devil’s advocate. A small minority within the British left did support Brexit, so maybe Stein was just taking cues from them without really understanding what she was endorsing. 

 

Erin Ryan: One topic where Dr. Stein does understand what she’s endorsing is medicine, and she took a harsh conspiratorial turn once she geared up for the 2016 election. Here she is speaking to parents in March of that year. This comes in the middle of an exchange about whether Wi-Fi–

 

Max Fisher: Whoa. 

 

Erin Ryan: Yes, Wi-Fi, could pose a medical threat to children. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] We should not be subjecting um kids brains, especially to that. And, you know, we don’t follow that issue in this country. But in Europe, where they do, you know, there are they have good precautions around wireless, maybe not good enough, you know, because it’s very hard to study this stuff. You know, we make guinea pigs out of whole populations and then we discover how many die. 

 

Max Fisher: Whoa. 

 

Erin Ryan: What? [laugh] Okay. Like, there are aspects of Wi-Fi that are bad for people, but it is what the Wi-Fi helps you access and look at. [laughter]

 

Max Fisher: It’s the things on the internet. Wi-Fi itself–

 

Erin Ryan: Is–

 

Max Fisher: –is perfectly safe. 

 

Erin Ryan: It’s fine. Yeah. Wi-Fi is fine. She’s, wow Jill, missing the point. 

 

Max Fisher: One thing that she is right about, the two party Wall Street duopoly, corporate media simply will not tell you about how Wi-Fi is turning your kids into telepathic super soldiers and making your pets gay. 

 

Erin Ryan: Ah. If my pets are gay, then why are they such shitty dressers? Stein also dabbled heavily in you guessed it, say it with me Max. 

 

[spoken together] Vaccine conspiracies. 

 

Erin Ryan: Here she is talking to the Washington Post in 2016, sounding an awful lot like RFK Jr and Donald Trump. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] You know. As a medical doctor, there was a time when I looked very closely at those issues and not all those issues were completely resolved. There were concerns among physicians about uh what the vaccination schedule meant. The toxic substances like mercury, which used to be rampant in vaccines. There were real questions that needed to be addressed. I think some of them at least have been addressed. I don’t know if all of them have been addressed. 

 

Erin Ryan: Uh. Woof. 

 

Max Fisher: Yeah. She goes on to say that the FDA and CDC are controlled by corporate interests with a stake in pushing vaccines, which, like you said, Erin is just a straight up RFK JR. talking point. 

 

Erin Ryan: The real progressive alternative to corporate Democrats strikes again. 

 

Max Fisher: And then there was that trip to Moscow. [violin music starts playing]

 

Erin Ryan: Yes, it was a fairy tale dinner gala held in December 2015 by the Russian state media network Russia Today. Jill Stein was one of two Americans in attendance Max. Do you remember who the other one was? 

 

Max Fisher: I do. Yes, it was Michael Flynn, the future Trump White House national security adviser, future Qanon truther who told Trump to suspend the Constitution and who also later pled guilty to lying to the FBI about his ties with Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak. 

 

Erin Ryan: And do you remember the infamous photo of Flynn sitting next to Putin at the dinner gala? 

 

Max Fisher: Yeah, they paid Flynn $45,000 to be there. 

 

Erin Ryan: Well, also at that table was Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Putin chief of Staff Sergei Ivanov, Putin deputy chief of Staff Aleksey Gromov, a pro Putin movie director from Serbia, two obscure pro-Putin politicians from Europe, and Jill Stein. 

 

Max Fisher: What on earth did she get out of this? 

 

Erin Ryan: I mean, nightmare blunt rotation right there. Not money she says. Stein insists she wasn’t paid for it. 

 

Max Fisher: So what? Legitimacy? 

 

Erin Ryan: As a campaign stop. Yeah. Look at me. Hobnobbing with world leaders. She even promoted the photo of her at Putin’s table in a press release along with this video. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] It’s been very exciting to see our message and our vision really resonate with others who are really looking for a way to bring us all together around a world that works for all of us. 

 

Max Fisher: The thing that gets me about it is that she let herself be used as a prop by a right wing despot at a moment when he was overseeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which went on to kill hundreds of thousands of people, all while she was holding herself up as the peace candidate. 

 

Erin Ryan: And not just the peace candidate, but the brave truth teller willing to stand up to the warmongers in the Democratic Party. 

 

Max Fisher: You know, it turns out that principled opposition to war dissipates when there is something in it for her. 

 

Erin Ryan: Stein got asked about that trip two years later in an interview with Democracy Now! And she claimed that actually she had gone to this gala dinner to confront Putin.

 

Max Fisher: Oh come on. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] At the time Russia had just begun to bomb Syria. And my message was that Russia was following in the disastrous footsteps of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. 

 

[clip of Democracy Now host] But how did you end up at that table? 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] So. 

 

[clip of Democracy Now host] This was the head table. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] That’s right. I knew I was going to be at the head table. All of the foreign diplomats were seated at the head table. Unfortunately, there was no interpreter at the head table and there were no introductions made. Uh. Vladimir Putin came in–

 

[clip of Democracy Now host] And this was a celebration of ten years of Russia Today, the uh– 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] Well it was a celebration, but it was also a conference. And there was media there actually from all over the world, including U.S. media and Canadian, um you know, Chinese, etc.. It was a real chance to lift up a different point of view about U.S. foreign policy, as well as Russian foreign policy to a broader audience. 

 

Erin Ryan: But there were no interpreters at the table. What audience are you talking about? People who just happen to speak English, who are watching RT? Like, what are you talking about, Jill? 

 

Max Fisher: So I know people listening might be wondering like, okay, who cares about one stupid dinner from nine years ago? And this last clip is why. Because almost nothing that she is saying here is true. There were no diplomats at the table. She never confronted Putin, as she later acknowledged, and she did not express any objection whatsoever to Russian aggression, as we heard in that clip just a second ago. And I think this speaks to what will become an important question when we get to her role in this current election, which is that Jill Stein does not actually believe in or stand for anything. Her supposedly principled stands are empty opportunism to exploit voters who really do care. 

 

Erin Ryan: Wow, tell me how you really feel, Max. [music break]

 

[AD BREAK]

 

Erin Ryan: Okay, let’s get to the 2016 election. 

 

Max Fisher: Ah. Yes. Jill Stein’s brush with history. 

 

Erin Ryan: Stein claimed that her candidacy was about challenging the two party system, but she mostly focused her campaign on taking votes from Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. 

 

Max Fisher: Which is another data point that Jill Stein’s Green Party intends to act as a spoiler in the Democrats. In other words, to make the Democrats lose. 

 

Erin Ryan: Stein argued that Clinton would be worse than Trump on everything from foreign policy to climate change. She also aggressively courted Democrats who’d supported Bernie Sanders. 

 

Max Fisher: But I bet she didn’t court primary voters who’d supported the losing Republican candidates. 

 

Erin Ryan: No, this was not a campaign by and for people disaffected by the party system writ large. It was a campaign aimed at disaffected Democrats only. 

 

Max Fisher: Including that summer by crashing the DNC with a camera crew. 

 

Erin Ryan: Max, do you know who that camera crew was with? 

 

Max Fisher: Wait, it wasn’t just Jill Stein’s campaign people?

 

Erin Ryan: Nope, it was a Fox News crew. 

 

Max Fisher: Hold on. You’re telling me that Jill Stein coordinated this stunt to try to split the Democratic vote with Fox News? 

 

Erin Ryan: Yes, that’s what I’m saying. 

 

Max Fisher: So accusing the Democrats of being secretly in league with Republicans while yourself walking around with your personal Fox News escort. It’s really Jill Stein at her Jill Steiniest. 

 

Erin Ryan: Just wait until we get to what she’s been up to in 2024, Max. 

 

Max Fisher: Okay. But let’s close out 2016 first. So she got 1% of the vote, right, which is triple her share in the prior election, but still not very much. 

 

Erin Ryan: But maybe enough to decide the election. Trump won Pennsylvania by just 44,000 votes. Stein had 50,000. 

 

Max Fisher: Huh. 

 

Erin Ryan: He won Michigan by 11,000. Stein had 51,000. 

 

Max Fisher: Whoa. 

 

Erin Ryan: And in Wisconsin, Trump won by 23,000 to Stein’s 31,000. 

 

Max Fisher: Oh. So if those votes had gone to Clinton. Trump never would have been president. 

 

Erin Ryan: It’s not for sure that they all would have had Stein not run. Maybe some of those people would have stayed home, which is what Stein argues. 

 

Max Fisher: Well, that’s not what you typically hear from political analysts, though. What you hear is that these were people who would have otherwise voted Democrat but who thought Clinton was going to win no matter what. So put Stein at the top of their ballot as a protest. 

 

Erin Ryan: Which tracks with Jill Stein’s strategy. She wasn’t courting nonvoters. That was Trump’s game. She was courting politically engaged Democrats, people, in other words, who do reliably vote. 

 

Max Fisher: After 2000. Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate who helped put Bush in office, kind of slinked away from the spotlight for a while. But that is not what Jill Stein did in 2016, right? 

 

Erin Ryan: Nope. She went back to Democratic voters again in November 2016, but this time she wasn’t asking for their votes. She was asking for their money. To fund recounts of swing state votes that she implied had been rigged for Trump. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] I was asked many times during the campaign would I stand up and call for a recount if there were doubts about the reliability or the security of the vote. And I always said yes, regardless of who is declared winner. 

 

Erin Ryan: That was Stein on a Fox News affiliate. She actually raised so many different election conspiracies that we had to cut them back for time. Here’s just a snip. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] So we saw breaches all over the place. And we know that these machines are wide open. They’re essentially an invitation. They’re old, they’re outdated. They don’t have security. The state of California has made them illegal. The very machines that are widespread throughout Wisconsin. 

 

Max Fisher: I know I said the anti-vaccine stuff sounded like Trump, but this is literally verbatim Trump election denialism. 

 

Erin Ryan: Stein began soliciting donations for a recount that she said would cost $2.5 million. But once she raised that, she turned around and said, actually, this is going to cost $4.5 million. Then she revised her made up number again and ultimately raised $7.3 million dollars. 

 

Max Fisher: So remember that Trump had promised to ban Muslim people from entering the country on day one of his presidency. People were terrified and they were desperate for any bit of hope that his presidency could be averted. 

 

Erin Ryan: Stein got asked a few times, hey, are you going to return any of those donations if the recount ends up costing less than you raised? Here she is on Vice News. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] If there is funds left over, which we do not expect, if in the event that turned out to be the case, we would be following FEC rules about what exactly should be done with that money. 

 

Max Fisher: And Erin, whatever was done with that money?

 

Erin Ryan: The Federal Elections Commission later fined Stein tens of thousands of dollars for failing to disclose the answer to that. It turns out she’d spent a lot of it on raises and bonuses for her core staff. She also used the money to pay her legal defense fees during the Senate Intelligence Committee investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

 

Max Fisher: Cool. So did she spend any of it on swing state recounts? 

 

Erin Ryan: She filed a couple of election related lawsuits, like one demanding that Pennsylvania use different voting machines in future elections. But that’s not a recount. And the district judge in that case called the suit pointless, telling Stein’s lawyers, quote, “Dr. Stein publicly announced that she seeks to promote election integrity, but she seeks to promote only herself.” 

 

Max Fisher: Wow. Okay. So there is this terrible kind of sad irony to Jill Stein getting people’s hopes up that she’s here to finally take on all the corruption and dishonesty in politics and not only is she just as guilty of those things herself, but over and over she uses that misplaced hope to benefit herself at the expense of those supporters. 

 

Erin Ryan: Jill Stein did not run in 2020. She sat out the Green Party presidential nomination. A guy named Howie Hawkins ran and only got one quarter of 1% of the vote. 

 

Max Fisher: Yeah, kind of feels like 2004, 2008 again. Everyone was maybe a little gun shy about voting for the Green Party and helping the Republicans win again. 

 

Erin Ryan: One noteworthy statistic here, more than two thirds of voters who voted for a third party candidate in 2016 went on to vote for Biden in 2020. Given that also included Libertarian Party voters and others, it’s a safe assumption that nearly all Green Party voters went Democratic. 

 

Max Fisher: Which is more evidence that Stein is pulling overwhelmingly from Democrats, not from nonvoters. 

 

Erin Ryan: Well, she’s back in 2024, and this time she has some new friends helping her out. 

 

Max Fisher: Captain Planet and the planeteers?

 

Erin Ryan: Nope. Opposite, [laughter] the Republican Party. 

 

[clip of Donald Trump] Cornel West. He’s one of my favorite candidates, Cornel West. And I like I like her also, Jill Stein. I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100% from them. He takes 100%. 

 

Erin Ryan: God. His campaign rallies, sound like a Nuremberg Home Companion. Uh. That was Trump at a campaign rally in June. That other name he mentioned is Cornel West, a famous college professor who’s also running as a left wing independent. 

 

Max Fisher: Okay. But just because Trump sees Stein and Cornel West as helpful doesn’t mean he’s like actually backing their candidacies. 

 

Erin Ryan: Not Trump himself. But Max, do you remember a Trump lawyer named Jay Sekulow? 

 

Max Fisher: Oh. Sure. This was Trump’s chief outside counsel in his first impeachment trial in 2019. He’s kind of a nutty right winger, represents antiabortion groups, frequent talking head on Fox News. You’re telling me he’s helping Jill Stein now? 

 

Erin Ryan: He’s been representing the Green Party, including last month before the Supreme Court. 

 

Max Fisher: Oh. This was the Green Party lawsuit to get on to the ballot in Nevada, right?

 

Erin Ryan: Jill Stein is not eager to talk about the fact that she’s working with notorious Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow, but Sekulow is quite proud of it. Here he is on his podcast last month, of course, he has a podcast. 

 

[clip of Jay Sekulow] Uh. The Nevada Green Party. Of course, we were we uh we filed suit and we brought it to the US Supreme Court. And we asked the U.S. Supreme Court to look at it. 

 

Erin Ryan: Take a Sudafed Jay. Just in case there is any doubt. Here’s another clip from a podcast where Sekulow and his co-hosts explained why he took on the case. 

 

[clip of Jay Sekulow] You may go, why do we care? Why are we involved in the Green Party? Because it’s just clear what kind of interference it’s trying to happen. 

 

[clip of Jay Sekulow’s podcast host] What’s the latest poll, we got Will to pull it up. What’s the latest poll in Nevada, when you look at Harris versus Trump. 

 

[clip of Jay Sekulow’s podcast host] Yeah. Because you may be thinking, okay, well, the Green Party’s what, gonna poll 1%? You know, couple percent. 

 

[clip of Jay Sekulow’s podcast host] One to  3% usually in the states–

 

[clip of Jay Sekulow] Yeah. 

 

[clip of Jay Sekulow’s podcast host] -they’re in. What’s the latest poll? 

 

[clip of Jay Sekulow’s podcast host 2] So the Real Clear Politics average has Harris up 0.2. 

 

[clip of Jay Sekulow’s podcast host] Okay. 

 

[clip of Jay Sekulow’s podcast host 2] The latest polls, though, one, she is up four and Trump is up three in the other. [?]. 

 

[clip of Jay Sekulow’s podcast host] Okay. So all these margin of error say this. And the Green Party gets somewhere between one to 3%, different game. 

 

Erin Ryan: I feel like I’m listening to sports radio. 

 

Max Fisher: [laugh] I can’t tell you how long this podcast is. They–

 

Erin Ryan: Oh my God. 

 

Max Fisher: –go on for hours. 

 

Erin Ryan: Oh my God. We need a microphone control in this country. We need a series of like tests that need to be passed and we need a series of checks and a waiting period. 

 

Max Fisher: You definitely need a background check before you can get a podcast microphone. 

 

Erin Ryan: Yes. 

 

Max Fisher: I agree. 

 

Erin Ryan: It I don’t think it even violates the Constitution. Pretty easy to get that sensible reforms enacted. 

 

Max Fisher: The thing I can’t believe about that clip is that Seculow just said it openly on his podcast. The Trump lawyer got on his podcast and said, we are helping Jill Stein so that Trump will win. 

 

Erin Ryan: And Stein is taking his help. It’s not like he’s some rogue actor. They’re working together. 

 

Max Fisher: And it’s not even just Sekulow from Trump World who’s her, right?

 

Erin Ryan: In Wisconsin, Stein’s campaign has been represented by Michael D. Dean, one of the lawyers who helped Trump try to overturn the 2020 election. She paid $100,000 to a Republican consulting firm operated by a guy who, according to The Intercept, took part in the January 6th insurrection. 

 

Max Fisher: Cool. 

 

Erin Ryan: It’s also since come out that a pro-Trump billionaire named Bernie Marcus secretly provided support to Stein’s 2016 campaign. 

 

Max Fisher: Wow. This for sure sounds like the campaign of a staunchly independent progressive who’s standing up to both parties and their big money backers. 

 

Erin Ryan: Mm hmm. When the Wall Street Journal asked Stein about all this high level Republican support, she called the reporting, quote, “a propaganda campaign.” 

 

Max Fisher: And I guess if you’re just aiming for 1% of voters, maybe 2%, you can afford to alienate the other 98. 

 

Erin Ryan: Well, let’s talk about her campaign, because this time around, she has found an issue that speaks to a good number of Democrats. 

 

Max Fisher: Oh. Gaza, right? 

 

Erin Ryan: Yeah. Here’s Stein in May, speaking to a Gaza relief dinner at a muslim community center in Dearborn, Michigan, asking for volunteers to help her campaign get on state ballots. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] Tell them to go to our website, which is JillStein2024.com. They can plug in to the ballot drive and we can help them basically volunteer. This is not an impossible task. They’ve tried to make it an impossible task to silence opposition, especially because the American people are in a very active state of uprising right now against this permanent war economy and this genocide. So the American people are really primed for a campaign that would be of by and for the people instead of of by and for the war contractors, for AIPAC, for the health insurance industry and the usual suspects who control our political system. 

 

Erin Ryan: [sigh] Like a lot of Jill Stein quotes, I’m like, I can get aboard 25% that. 

 

Max Fisher: Right. Right. Well, that’s how she gets you. Something I want to emphasize is that when Stein goes on TV, she presents her campaign as a symbolic protest against the administration’s Israel policy. But when she’s in rooms like this, especially in Michigan, which has large Arab and Muslim populations, she goes a big step further and suggests that she is actually going to stop Israel, that voting for her can bring an end to it. 

 

Erin Ryan: She actually opened that speech by pumping her fist in the air and saying they will not stop us from freeing Palestine. 

 

Max Fisher: Well, it’s not clear to me how voting for Stein accomplishes this, given how open she has been about trying to peel away Democratic votes, in other words, to help Trump win. 

 

Erin Ryan: Famous friend of Palestine, Donald Trump. 

 

Max Fisher: Right. 

 

Erin Ryan: The journalist Mehdi Hasan, put this to Stein and her running mate in a recent interview on his media network, Zeteo. Here’s a clip. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] Every vote for our campaign is a shot across the bow of the empire. So say–

 

[clip of Mehdi Hasan] It’s about feeling good. It’s not about you changing things. 

 

[clip of unnamed person] It’s about consolidating power. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] Well, no, it is it is. 

 

[clip of Mehdi Hasan] What you just described is a feeling. Right?

 

[clip of Jill Stein] No, no, I said it was a shot– 

 

[clip of Mehdi Hasan] I, I asked for a plan.

 

[clip of Jill Stein] Well, let me finish the, let me finish– 

 

[clip of Mehdi Hasan] Let me just finish my question, then you could answer. Let me repeat the question. Lay out for me the steps whereby I. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] Yes. 

 

[clip of Mehdi Hasan] Go into a voting booth. Vote Green. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] Okay. 

 

[clip of Mehdi Hasan] And the genocide stops. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] Let me put it–

 

[clip of Mehdi Hasan] I don’t see that happening. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] –very clearly. 

 

[clip of Mehdi Hasan] Yeah. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] So whether we get 2%, 5%, 15%, we are creating a very organized coalition that is here for the long haul. 

 

[clip of unnamed person] That’s right. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] For a political vehicle to stop genocide. 

 

[clip of unnamed person] That’s right. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] And the imperial policies that go with it. So every vote that one casts is huge. And every time one even registers in the polls on behalf of our campaign is another warning shot. So–

 

[clip of Mehdi Hasan] I understand that. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] What what is the–

 

[clip of Mehdi Hasan] Agreed. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] So where does that go? 

 

[clip of Mehdi Hasan] Yup. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] Where that goes is directly to the White House and to Congress to say. 

 

[clip of unnamed person] Correct. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] That, you know, we not only have public opinions uh polls to show that this is the very firm commitment of the American people right now. 

 

[clip of Mehdi Hasan] So it’s a pressure campaign it’s to say it’s to send a message. 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] It’s a huge pressure. Well it’s not–

 

[clip of Mehdi Hasan] Send a message to who though? 

 

[clip of Jill Stein] To the power holders who have–

 

[clip of Mehdi Hasan] Who will be the power holder?

 

[clip of Jill Stein] So whoever they are. 

 

Erin Ryan: It’s like, okay, you are in your house, you’re standing there, the door is open and there’s a bear running at you and you have enough time to fire a warning shot into your ceiling or close the door and you’re mad because the door hasn’t been closing the way you wanted to close. So to teach the door a lesson, you fire a shot into the air and the bear fucking eats you. 

 

Max Fisher: Wow. That’s a great metaphor. 

 

Erin Ryan: Thank you. 

 

Max Fisher: You just do that on the spot? 

 

Erin Ryan: Yes. 

 

Max Fisher: That was really good. So Mehdi keeps pushing her. It goes on for a long time like this. To explain why voting for the Green Party will help to end the killing in Gaza. And she just can’t give an answer. 

 

Erin Ryan: There’s more evidence that Stein’s campaign isn’t really aimed at helping Gaza. She’d initially courted a Palestinian-American activist named Noura Erakat to be her running mate. Erakat later revealed that she’d said yes on the condition that Stein promised to drop out if Biden got a permanent cease fire deal in Gaza and imposed an arms embargo on Israel. 

 

Max Fisher: I mean, that makes sense. You know, use the Green Party’s 1% as leverage to force the Democrats to deliver big progressive concessions. Like what an opportunity for the Green Party to prove that it’s not just a spoiler that benefits Republicans. It really can bring progressive change. 

 

Erin Ryan: Except Stein refused. And when Mehdi Hasan asked her about this, Stein said of Noura Erakat, quote, “Bless her heart, but she is new to this process.” 

 

Max Fisher: Ugh. So this feels like the 2016 Jill Stein recount fund all over again. Exploit the very real fear and disaffection of a subset of Democratic voters by promising something you have no ability or maybe even intention of delivering, and then use that support to benefit yourself. 

 

Erin Ryan: All of which may be why actual progressives are getting fed up with Stein. Here’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Instagram last month. 

 

[clip of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] 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. You’re not auth– to me, it does not read as authentic. It reads as predatory. I’m sorry. I’m just saying it. 

 

Erin Ryan: She’s right. The Green Party under Stein has shrunk from about 320,000 members 20 years ago to 230,000 members today. 

 

Max Fisher: Wow. 

 

Erin Ryan: There are only 143 Green Party officeholders in the entire country and none in statewide or federal offices. 

 

Max Fisher: Yeah. She’s not really in it to effect change or build an alternative to the two party system it seems like. 

 

Erin Ryan: But if she gets Trump elected again, just think of the recount fundraiser she could hold. 

 

Max Fisher: Yeah. The rise of the squad has been really instructive for understanding Stein and how she actually fits into our political system, because here, finally, are young progressives challenging the party from within who sometimes have backgrounds in third parties like Ocasio-Cortez does. And Stein, rather than treating them as allies, is trying to undermine and weaken them too. 

 

Erin Ryan: You can see why Stein might not be AOC’s biggest fan, but it’s very hard to understand why she’s also going after Rashida Tlaib. 

 

Max Fisher: Wait, Rashida Tlaib, the first ever Palestinian-American in Congress and left wing Michigan Democrat who is arguably Biden’s most vocal critic on Israel. The issue that Stein claims to care the most about, she’s going after her? 

 

Erin Ryan: Yeah. Stein’s party is running a candidate against Tlaib named Brenda Sanders, who believes in chem trails and who in 2020 said of Tlaib, this is what is wrong with America. The interests of the Gaza Strip should not be prioritized over the interests of Detroiters. 

 

Max Fisher: I understand being disaffected with the two party system. I understand being angry with Joe Biden over Gaza. I really do. But I cannot overstate to people that if you are considering voting Jill Stein to register that feeling, you are allowing yourself to be taken in by a grifter who is working arm in arm with Republicans to get Trump elected. Erin, I don’t suppose you’ve seen this O.J. Simpson documentary from 2016 that won the Oscar, have you? 

 

Erin Ryan: No, I haven’t. 

 

Max Fisher: It’s really good, Juliana and I have been watching it and I kept thinking about Jill Stein. During OJ’s trial, his lawyer’s closing argument to the jury was that the LAPD deserved to be punished for its history of racism, which is absolutely true. And they also argued that acquitting O.J. would deliver that punishment, which I think is not really true, but it worked. Members of the jury have since said that their vote to acquit OJ was payback to the LAPD. But of course, this did not do a thing to punish the LAPD. All it did was let a famous rich guy get away with murder. And it feels like Stein is doing something very similar where she’s exploiting this same kind of desire to do something in a way that will not actually bring the justice that people want to bring. So I like I really think if you or someone you know is thinking that pulling that lever for Jill Stein will punish Joe Biden for Gaza, it won’t. He is going to be fine. What it will do is punish 330 million Americans who are not responsible for what’s happening in Gaza, but will see their rights and freedoms curtailed by another Trump term. And it would punish people in Gaza who even the uncommitted movement says would be in substantially greater danger under Trump. So please, really, there’s nothing of any progressive value to be gained by voting for Stein and so much harm that could be done. 

 

Erin Ryan: Yeah, I completely agree with you, Max. And I just want to add another metaphor to the pile of metaphors. Max, if you were caught in a trap, you don’t want to, like, gnaw off an arm that isn’t in the trap. You know what I mean? 

 

Max Fisher: Yeah. 

 

Erin Ryan: Like, you’re gnawing off the arm that is not caught–

 

Max Fisher: Right. 

 

Erin Ryan: –in the trap. Like–

 

Max Fisher: You’re punishing your arm to do something. 

 

Erin Ryan: Yeah. 

 

Max Fisher: Yeah. 

 

Erin Ryan: Exactly. It’s like what Jill Stein is saying that voting for her can accomplish is simply not anything that bears out in any form of reality. 

 

Max Fisher: Yeah it won’t accomplish that. And she’s not trying to accomplish it. 

 

Erin Ryan: And she’s not even trying. Exactly. And another thing is, you know, Donald Trump being really supportive of her candidacy tells you everything you need to know. 

 

Max Fisher: Yeah. 

 

Erin Ryan: Like, if he he likes that she’s in the race, he likes that she’s taking votes away. If he thought that she was taking votes away from him, you know, that he would have a nickname for her. 

 

Max Fisher: Right. 

 

Erin Ryan: And he doesn’t. So there you go. 

 

Max Fisher: Well, let’s go out with 2016 comments from the left wing academic Noam Chomsky. Even though he’d been Stein’s highest profile endorser in 2012, in 2016, he said swing state voters shouldn’t vote for Stein. They should vote for Democrats. And here’s Chomsky on Democracy Now! explaining why.

 

[clip of Noam Chomsky] In a swing state, I would vote against Trump. And by elementary arithmetic, that means you hold your nose and you vote Democrat. I don’t think there’s any other rational choice. Abstaining from vote voting or say voting for the candidate you prefer, a minority candidate just amounts to a vote for Donald Trump. [music break]

 

Max Fisher: How We Got Here is written and hosted by me, Max Fisher and Erin Ryan. 

 

Erin Ryan: Our producer is Emma Illick-Frank. 

 

Max Fisher: Evan Sutton mixes and masters the show. 

 

Erin Ryan: Jordan Cantor sound engineers the show. Audio support from Kyle Seglin, Charlotte Landes and Vasilis Fotopoulos. 

 

Max Fisher: Production support from Leo Duran, Raven Yamamoto, and Adriene Hill. [music break]

 

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