RT.com<\/p>\n
The collusion circus is coming for Jill Stein. The US Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the 2016 Green Party presidential candidate to hand over documents amid accusations she was part of a Russian plot to elect Trump.<\/p>\n
The news was met with delight by some pro-Hillary Clinton Democrats who have long expressed a visceral hatred of Stein simply because she had the audacity to run for president \u2014 an act which they say hurt their candidate\u2019s chances of winning by unnecessarily splitting the vote on the left. In the greatest democracy in the world (supposedly) Stein committed the unforgivable sin of running for office and winning some votes. There can only be one explanation for this, the \u2018Russiagaters\u2019 say: Stein was a Russian plant, designed to pull votes away from Clinton to tip the election in Trump\u2019s favor. In their increasingly warped minds, nothing else could possibly make sense.<\/p>\n
Never mind that Stein also ran for president in 2012, ran for governor in Massachusetts in 2002, as a candidate for the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 2004, for Massachusetts Secretary of the Commonwealth in 2006 and for Massachusetts governor again in 2010 \u2014 all of which she lost. Given her track record of not winning, it\u2019s hard to believe Putin would choose Stein to pin his hopes on as the candidate to pull most votes away from Clinton in 2016. But anything is possible, right? Maybe Stein has been a secret Russian asset lying in wait all this time. That, apparently, is what some loony Democrats would have us all believe.<\/p>\n
In the real world, however, there is absolutely no reason to believe Stein has anything to do with an alleged Russian plot to elect Trump \u2014 evidence for which also remains elusive. Stein\u2019s primary transgressions are as follows: In 2015, she attended a gala event to mark RT\u2019s tenth anniversary in Moscow, where she (god forbid) sat at the same table as Vladimir Putin. Rumors abound that Russia paid for Stein\u2019s trip to Moscow, an accusation which she strongly denies (and claims she\u00a0has the receipts<\/a>\u00a0to prove it). Perhaps even worse than setting foot on Russian soil though, Stein has often dared to express opinions that don\u2019t sit well with establishment Democrats (or Republicans). And well, that\u2019s basically it as far as the evidence for her \u201ccollusion<\/em>\u201d with Russia goes.<\/p>\n http:\/\/twitter.com\/daveanthony\/status\/943532197285208064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fop-edge%2F413960-jill-stein-collussion-russiagate%2F<\/p>\n But lack of evidence proving Stein has anything to do with the Russian government hasn\u2019t stopped her critics from making wild and defamatory claims. Zac Petkanas (whose Twitter bio describes him as a former \u201cdirector of rapid response<\/em>\u201d for Clinton\u2019s 2016 campaign) declared on Twitter this week that \u201cJill Stein is a Russian agent<\/em>\u201d \u2014 a sentence which he pasted eight times into the same tweet. If that\u2019s the kind of \u201crapid response<\/em>\u201d Petkanas was having to Clinton campaign crises (of which there were many) it\u2019s no wonder she lost.<\/p>\n http:\/\/twitter.com\/Zac_Petkanas\/status\/942880616357486592?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fop-edge%2F413960-jill-stein-collussion-russiagate%2F<\/p>\n ThinkProgress, which bills itself as a \u201cprogressive<\/em>\u201d platform has devoted an article to Stein\u2019s \u201cpro-Kremlin talking points<\/em>\u201d and detailed a list of her \u201codd views<\/em>\u201d \u2014 some of which include not loving NATO, not hating Julian Assange, not hating RT and not hating Russia in general. Those, of course, are all big no-nos if you want to avoid a congressional investigation these days.<\/p>\n But the ThinkProgress piece is typical of the kind of coverage Stein received throughout the election campaign, too. In one particularly bad example, Vice published a\u00a0mocking piece<\/a>\u00a0dripping with disdain for the candidate. It was headlined \u2018Everybody Hates Jill\u2019. At one point, the author proudly states she has \u201cridiculed<\/em>\u201d and \u201cmocked<\/em>\u201d Stein on other occasions, too, lest we assume it was only the one occasion.<\/p>\n http:\/\/twitter.com\/DanielleRyanJ\/status\/943552474488610816?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.rt.com%2Fop-edge%2F413960-jill-stein-collussion-russiagate%2F<\/p>\n That\u2019s the kind of farcical and unserious coverage third-party candidates receive in the US \u2014 and the journalists who do the mocking, treating candidates like Stein as an amusing sideshow, are very often the same journalists who pretend to care deeply about the lack of fair coverage which tiny opposition movements receive in countries like Russia.<\/p>\n This is a witch hunt. It is neo-McCarthyism, plain and simple. The people who are outright calling Stein a Russian agent are making a complete mockery of themselves and of the American political process \u2014 and they genuinely appear to have no idea. One almost feels a sense of second-hand embarrassment for them. With the frenzy around Jill Stein, they have managed to spin a scandal out of nothing, because, for lack of a better word, they\u2019re butthurt that their candidate didn\u2019t win.<\/p>\n Dragging Stein into this mess has been instructive in one sense, however. If nothing else, it shows Clinton Democrats up for what they really are. It proves that the ‘Resist’ crowd’s crusade is not just about Trump and “collusion<\/em>” \u2014 it’s also about discrediting all dissenting American voices and establishing their own definition of what political opposition is supposed to look like \u2014 and for the Clinton cult, it\u2019s not supposed to look like Jill Stein.<\/p>\n Of the infamous RT dinner in Moscow, Max Blumenthal (who attended the event)\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0for Alternet: \u201cNone of us had any inkling the festivities would come to be seen as a de facto crime scene by packs of Beltway reporters and congressional investigators.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n Jill Stein had dinner with Putin, so… GET THE GUILLOTINE! That's how we roll in this country now. Didn't she know it's illegal to eat with Russians?<\/p>\n — Rich Baris The People's Pundit (@Peoples_Pundit) December 19, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n