Dr. Jill Stein has diagnosed thousands of patients over her career as a Harvard-educated internist, but now the Green Party spoiler candidate has some concerns about Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump
In a Politico podcast interview, Stein questioned the declaration that Trump would be "the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency," as his physician Harold Bornstein asserted.
“You know, I don't pretend to be able to do TV diagnosis, but I think the guy has a problem,” she said. “The guy has a lot of problems -- physical, mental, emotional, cognitive."
She emphasized examples like his erratic (rather than calculating) behavior, his confusion over his political positions he's held over the years, his sudden "softening" on his immigration policies in August and suddenly denouncing birtherism after a five-year crusade.
“It's hard to, you know, to think too hard about anything Donald Trump says because he will change his mind in the next hour, if not the next day, or whatever,” she said. “Today, suddenly, after five years, he became convinced that it's not an issue. Yesterday it was an issue. It will probably become an issue again for him. You know, the guy may have a memory problem. Who knows what it is? But he's incapable of having a consistent thought or policy.”
She also believes Trump is getting it easier than others on the tax return issue because his career has been in business and not politics.
“At least with Clinton, you know, there was some degree of transparency,” she said. “But what's going on with Trump, you can't even get at and what he said was that even to clarify 15 out of these 500 deals, these are just like the most frightening mafiosos around the world. He's like -- he's a magnet for crime and extortion.”
While, Ralph Nader still refuses to acknowledge his 2.7 million protest votes may have helped elect George W. Bush in 2000, Stein says she's out to fight the system.
Admitting Trump is the worst possible thing that could happen to the country, she also says that the binary options amount to “death by gunshot or death by strangulation.”
While she describes Trump as a danger she also believes he's nothing more than a moron who has destroyed the GOP. Clinton, on the other hand, she considers a greater threat.
“Donald Trump, I think, will have a lot of trouble moving things through Congress,” Stein says. “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.”
While Stein might seem like the liberal option to moderate Clinton values, she also took a few punches at progressive leader Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) as another Washington insider.
“I've tried to talk with Bernie, but, you know, Bernie is -- he is a team player,” she said, saying he refuses to speak to her. “I think he's on the wrong team, perhaps because he's been in Washington, D.C., too long, because he used to really understand independent politics and why we cannot have a viable political system unless we have independent political parties." She concludes that it could be "a generational thing.”
Like Trump, Stein is also a fan of Russian president Vladimir Putin and appears on the Putin-controlled cable news network RT (Russia Today). Her trip to Russia and an appearance on RT sparked conspiracy theories that Stein was a recruit from Trump's former aide Paul Manafort and Clinton foe Julian Assange, who Stein regards as a hero.
Earlier this year, Stein couldn't decide if Putin should be classified as a despot. “To some extent, yes, but there could be a whole lot worse,” she said. But when it comes to fighting back against Putin she cautions against it. “When we needlessly provoke him and endanger him and surround him with war games -- this is sort of the Cuban Missile Crisis on steroids … and I don't think this is a good idea.”
She also rejects Russia being behind hacking the Democratic Party and that Putin wants to see Trump elected.
“I don't think we have evidence -- there is really no hard evidence,” she said. “We need to take a deep breath on this. This really doesn't seem to be happening.”
Listen to the full interview below:
