Sep 13, 2024
Jill Stein BEEFS With AOC After Breakfast Club Interview
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called out Green Party candidate Jill Stein for not making any progress for the Green party in the last two elections.
- 12 minutes
Doctor Stein.
In 2002, you ran for governor
of Massachusetts, and you lost in 2004.
You ran for state representative
in Massachusetts, and you lost in 2006.
You ran for Secretary of the Commonwealth.
You also lost.
In 2010, you ran for governor again,
this time against the first black governor
[00:00:15]
in Massachusetts, Deval Patrick.
You lost.
This is not DNC talking points.
This is my research.
And sadly for you, the research says
you have never won an election.
One thing that AOC has done
that you haven't is win some elections.
Yowza.
That was Angela Rye of The Breakfast Club
with a tough words
[00:00:33]
or as she would describe, just the facts.
That's the electoral record
for Jill Stein right there.
And, you know, that's a lot when you put
it in a short period of time like that.
So Jill Stein probably not going
to enjoy that presentation of material.
But understand that the question
of Jill Stein's strategy, what races she's
[00:00:52]
run in over the last decade or so,
has gotten a lot more attention
over the last week, because Representative
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
was asked a question about that.
And responded to it on Instagram.
So she was asked by a user,
how do I tell my friends who are.
Jill Stein voters?
They are wasting their time and effort?
Which is a provocative question,
admittedly,
[00:01:09]
but this is what AOC had to say.
What I have a problem with is the fact
that if you are running for president,
you are the de facto leader of your party.
I've been on record that about my
criticisms of the two party system.
So this is not about that,
but you are the leader of your party.
[00:01:26]
And if you run for years and years
and years and years and years in a row,
and your party is not grown and you don't
add city council seats and you don't add
down ballot candidates and and you don't
add state electeds, that's bad leadership.
To me it does not read as authentic.
It reads as predatory.
[00:01:45]
- What does this person do to grow power?
- So she's not buying it.
And that's some of the harshest criticism
that you've likely heard of Jill
Stein coming from AOC, who's taken a
very different path, and that was alluded
to by Angela Rye on The Breakfast Club.
But we want to be fair
and give Jill Stein a chance to respond.
[00:02:02]
Here is what she had to say
following that video by AOC.
I just wanted to thank AOC Pelosi so
very much for her very authentic concern
about growing green power.
Clearly, AOC is the attack dog du jour
and the Democrats are running scared.
[00:02:19]
And they should be because who wants
to support a genocide?
AOC, who's supposed to be in leadership
of the Democratic Party?
It's amazing if she doesn't know about
the anti-democratic tactics and strategies
that the Democratic Party uses
to crush and silence political opposition.
[00:02:38]
Okay, so a bit of a fact check.
Unless I'm wrong, I don't believe
that AOC is part of the leadership
of the Democratic Party.
And I think that AOC,
having successfully primaried one of the
most powerful Democrats in Joe Crowley,
I think that she does understand
the way Democrats do things.
She's seen what the Democratic Party
and AIPAC have done
[00:02:55]
to a number of other members of the squad.
That just doesn't mean
that she comes out of that experience
believing that Jill Stein's particular
political strategy is the right one.
And so we've got some more
that we can get to.
But I'm curious
what you think about this feud.
Hey, don't scroll away.
Come back, come back.
[00:03:13]
Because before the video continues,
we just want to urge you
to lend your support to TYT.
You power our honest reporting.
You do it at tyt.com/team
and we love you for it.
Yeah, I agree and disagree
with all of them.
[00:03:28]
So let me break it down.
Number one so Angela Rye, there's one
thing she said that I didn't love,
where she was like, you ran against
the first black governor of Massachusetts.
Why was no one supposed
to run against him?
Because he's the first black governor.
[00:03:43]
And then she pointed out
that Jill Stein ran against Obama.
Yet he was the president at the time.
And now against Harris,
she's the Democratic nominee.
Like you don't need to make it racial.
Jill Stein's not racist.
That's crazy.
Okay, so but on the other hand,
did she lose all those elections?
[00:03:59]
Yes. She lost all those elections.
And has she built power over
in those four year periods between losing
the presidential ones to AOC's point,
unfortunately they haven't.
They've stalled.
And so my main issue with the third party
runs, the Green Party, etc., is
[00:04:14]
and I've said this a billion times, guys,
if you get it up to 20 or 30 points,
you're in the ballgame.
Shoot, if you even got it to ten points.
And I know they're going to do
what they did to RFK Jr
and be totally unfair to you, etc..
Right.
And you can say, hey, you could hate RFK
Jr, but the brother got up to 12 points
[00:04:30]
in a general election.
You got that gets you into a debate, etc..
The Green Party has never gotten there.
So, you know,
I like a lot of their policies.
I want them, but if you're not building
power and you're not getting to a point
where you give us a reason to be able
to support you, to push it further, and at
[00:04:46]
the end, you're always at two points.
And then you say, all right, now give me
the two points in a super close election.
I don't love that.
And that's why I always
give people an opportunity.
We've interviewed Jill Stein many times,
even when mainstream
media reporters yell at us for it.
[00:05:01]
I'm like, wait,
I thought you guys were reporters.
What do you care? Right.
- We did a town hall for her.
- Yeah, we did a town hall for her.
I interviewed every third party candidate.
I give them every opportunity
in the world.
Andrew Yang got one of his first
interviews here on this show.
On and on it goes.
But at some point, you got
to push past your two and a half points.
[00:05:19]
Now, having said that,
now let me turn to AOC.
Predatory.
That's a weird word.
Why is that predatory?
What a weird word to use in that context.
What were you, predatory
when you ran against Joe Crowley?
I just don't get it.
[00:05:34]
It's it's very off putting
to put it like that.
And then she says, well, look,
I of course, I agree with the two party
criticism of the two party system.
This is not about that.
No, I think this is about that.
And no, I'm not that familiar with your
criticism of the two party system.
[00:05:51]
She says, oh, I was on the Working
Families Party ballot,
and I liked Democratic socialists,
although they've had a falling out now
because of Israel-Palestine issues, etc..
Yeah, but you were in New York
in the working families Party, has
a ballot line in New York is very powerful
or powerful enough in New York, etc..
[00:06:08]
So no, you're now the part that Jill
Stein's right about is, AOC is being
is serving the role of the attack dog.
So she's the one that goes out there
and has the assignment of make
sure you attack the third party people
and drive them out of the race.
[00:06:24]
She's been doing that now
for a couple of months.
And so the establishment,
the leadership gives you that role.
So she's not in leadership. John is right.
But she's obviously
working with leadership.
And her role is to attack anyone
that might look like you because not
in terms of appearance, but in terms of
progressive, etcetera, because we need a
[00:06:43]
progressive to attack other progressives.
I wouldn't have taken that role,
to be honest with you.
You know, the role I want
is to attack Trump.
But okay, if you want to nip
at Jill Stein's heels,
I enjoy I'm sure that you know,
you're you fit into the system, etc..
- Last thing I'll say, she.
- Criticizes Trump to be fair.
[00:06:58]
Okay, great. Happy to hear it.
So I know that you know, just Democrats
is the main organization
that helped get her elected.
And and then afterwards, Justice Democrat
asked her to help other people run
[00:07:16]
against incumbents just like she did.
Why?
Because you have to build power
in those four years and in fact,
in Congress, obviously every two years.
And if you're not constantly primarying
incumbents, you're not going to be able
to build up enough power in the building
to swing votes and make a difference.
[00:07:33]
And as soon as she became an incumbent,
I'm not saying that she didn't support
any more primaries.
She did.
But she became so much more hesitant
to support anyone running
against an incumbent
because they became her colleagues.
[00:07:49]
So the part about building up power,
I don't know, let me see it
because I haven't seen it yet.
I agree with you on a lot of points.
I think she definitely did
the the call out rather than call in.
She was, you know, on her couch doing an
Instagram live and she decided to not
[00:08:05]
be Diplomatic and it came off really bad.
It came off.
I don't think she is the dubbed
attack dog by the Democrats.
I'd push back on that,
but I definitely think that it came
off like, she was punching left.
And I think that when you are a leftist
and when you're a progressive like we are
[00:08:23]
who do want a parliamentarian system,
a more democratic system
in this country ranked choice voting,
amazing reforms that would make
this country far more representative.
You cannot gloss over the I've been
critical of the two party system
because that rings a little bit
Nancy Pelosi saying, I've been
[00:08:41]
for Medicare for all back in my day.
We always have to keep on stating the case
why we live in this two
party corporate duopoly,
and it's awful and we need to fight
against it while simultaneously,
and I agree, be strategic with our vote.
And I've said this on my show,
people can check it out.
[00:08:59]
But I dug deep around this.
And specifically I want to talk about
really quickly the angle around ceasefire
and Gaza, because I think one thing
that does feel slightly predatory to me,
although it is a harsh word,
is that Jill Stein is swallowing up
a lot of the people who cannot stomach
[00:09:17]
voting for Kamala Harris because she
will not break from Joe Biden's policies
in Gaza, and I understand that.
However, one of those people
who is being hounded to support Jill
Stein's candidacy is Ruth Roman.
Ruth Roman is the Palestinian Georgia
elected official who was slated
[00:09:33]
possibly to speak at the DNC,
but was never, of course, given
the opportunity to, as we now know well,
Roman had a much better life than AOC
and spoke exactly about why she's not
jumping ship on the Democratic Party,
why it's because she sees progress
on the issue of Palestine
[00:09:50]
within the Democratic Party.
She's not talking about Kamala Harris
and what's in her heart
and what she's talking about
within the Georgia state legislature.
She's talking about at the DNC
with people wearing pins and keffiyehs
and and all kinds of supportive
statements and the massive applause
that anytime anyone mentioned ceasefire
[00:10:07]
or the dignity of Palestinians,
that she sees that this issue and all
the people that have been in the streets,
all the students that have crushed it,
you know, despite being crushed
themselves, they are having an impact.
And so Ramon's like, why would I
just bounce and leave this ship?
[00:10:24]
To make this sort of, again,
kind of protest vote stand that truly
will be and is it's a spoiler vote.
I'm sorry y'all.
You can vote Jill Stein.
That's totally within your right.
But you have to acknowledge it's
a protest vote that is also a spoil vote.
But you acknowledge that. And that's okay.
[00:10:41]
I'm not saying not to do it,
but that's what it is.
It is not a strategic vote.
And certainly, again, in the words
of Palestinian-American Ramon,
not a strategic vote when it comes to the
liberation of the Palestinian people.
Yeah.
All right.
I'm going to say one last thing.
[00:10:56]
Look, progressives are never going
to get into power.
And I don't mean in terms
of personal power, the presidency
or anything along those lines.
I mean, in terms of passing bills
until they learn
how to challenge the establishment.
This whole idea of, oh, I'm going to work
within the establishment,
[00:11:14]
and here I'll attack Jill Stein.
So I'll get some brownie points from
the establishment, and I wonder if they'll
give me another inch in the next bill.
I wonder if they'll give me
two more percent in the next bill.
That is a terrible strategy.
It will never work.
It's incrementalism.
It's everything
that we've been fighting against.
[00:11:30]
You have to actually challenge power.
And it doesn't look like AOC has any
interest in challenging power anymore.
That's my honest read of it.
So maybe Jill Stein's doing it
in a way that's not very productive.
But, you know, no one disputes
that she's at least earnest about it
[00:11:48]
and authentic about it.
Whether you agree or disagree with not
just her politics, but the strategy
of constantly running for president.
So at the end of the day,
I'm going to vote for whoever is going
to beat whoever has the best chance
of beating Donald Trump.
And right now, with less than two months
to go in the election, that is not close.
[00:12:04]
It is not at all close.
And I want to beat Donald Trump,
and I will beat Donald Trump,
and we will live to fight another day.
But when we live through this election
and we don't let the fascists win,
you do have to fight another day.
[00:12:20]
If your plan is to not fight another day,
and to go back on your couch and say,
oh, now I'm part of the establishment.
Yay!
Oh, let mansion write all the bills
and oh, I won't fight back at all.
But hey, you know what?
I got a tiny little sliver here.
Yay!
[00:12:35]
Incrementalism. That was not the point.
That is not how you build power.
That is not how you use power.
That's just you being a celebrity.
So enjoy.
Thanks for watching The Young Turks.
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