Green Party Candidate Jill Stein Endorses Donald Trump-Truth! & Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
Green Party candidate Jill Stein endorsed Donald Trump and said, “Donald Trump is better” and “Hillary Clinton is more likely to start nuclear war” during an appearance on C-SPAN.
The Truth:
Jill Stein was critical of Hillary Clinton in an interview on C-SPAN, and she said Donald Trump’s plan for dealing with Russia would be better — but Stein did not endorse Trump.
The rumor that Stein has endorsed Trump started with a report that appeared at the fringe website USA Politics Today on October 13th under the headline, “BREAKING: Jill Stein Just ENDORSED Donald Trump! Watch Her Obliterate Hillary!” The story begins:
It’s nice to see people coming out and supporting Trump instead of condemning him.
If Hillary Clinton wanted to recruit some of the independent voters, she just lost that chance.
Jill Stein just came out and destroyed Hillary Clinton and everything she stands for.
In the video, she says that “Donald Trump is better” and that “Hillary Clinton more likely is start nuclear war.
While Stein was definitely critical of Clinton, the USA Politics Today article took some of her statements out of context to advance the idea that Stein had actually endorsed Trump. In reality, Stein is a presidential candidate herself who has endorsed nobody.
However, during the C-SPAN interview on October 12th, Stein said, “Hillary Clinton is more likely to start nuclear war” than Trump, as the story reported. Here’s Stein’s full quote:
…It’s Clinton who wants to start an air war with Russia over Syria by calling for a no fly zone. We have 2,000 nuclear missiles on hair trigger alert, and Michael Gorbatjov, the former premier of the Soviet Union, is saying we are closer to nuclear war than we have ever been. Under Hillary Clinton, we could slide into nuclear war very quickly from her declared policy in Syria. I sure won’t sleep well at night if Hillary Clinton is elected.
And the idea that Stein said “Trump is better” than Clinton came from Stein’s quote that Trump’s idea for dealing with Russia were better than Clinton’s:
We have another choice other than these two candidates who are both promoting illegal policies. On the issue war and weasel weapons, it is actually Hillary’s policies, which are much scarier than Donald Trump who does not want to go to war with Russia. He wants to seek modes of working together, which is the root that we need to follow, not to go into confrontation and nuclear war with Russia.
Further disproving the idea that Stein endorsed Clinton was Stein’s argument that Clinton was ill equipped to deal with so-called problems brought on by Trump and right-wing extremism that arose in response to Clinton polcies:
Even Donald Trump and the right-wing extremism grows out of the policies of the Clintons. In particular, NAFT, which sent our jobs overseas, and Wall Street deregulation, which blew 9 million jobs up into smoke. A vote for Hillary Clinton isn’t going to fix it.
So, Stein has been critical of both Trump and Clinton. But since she’s vying to win the presidential election herself, don’t expect Stein to endorse either of the major party candidates in the general election.