Why did Putin promote Jill Stein if he wanted Trump to win?

Tweet

Reporting on the Green Party's plans for a repeat performance, "Green Party, Eyeing the 2020 Presidential Race, Prepares for the Midterms," NY Times, Aug. 2, 2018, Liam Stack wrote:

Greens bristle at the “spoiler” accusation, which they say ignores poll data that suggested many of Ms. Stein’s 2016 supporters either would not have voted if she had not been on the ballot or would have voted for Mr. Trump.

“Candidates have to earn votes, they don’t own votes,” Ms. Stein said. “That in a nutshell is the problem with the Democrats, it’s the arrogance of thinking they own the system.”

Her campaign certainly was far more critical of the Democrats than it was of the Republicans, even as the Grand Old Party of Lincoln was turning into the party of white Christian nationalists, so maybe it was an environment in which Trump supporters could feel comfortable, but perhaps Ms. Stein should consider what it means that many of her supporters would have voted for a bigot if she wasn't on the ballot. If a racist in the White House was their second choice, just how progressive were these supporters?

Obviously, these Jill Stein supporters with Trump as their second choice, didn't expect her to win. Nobody's that stupid. They knew, as did the whole world, that the election would put either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in the White House.

Jill Stein argued that it would make no difference. We'll let history be the judge of that. But she should question whether some of her supporters had nefarious reasons for being her supporters. Did they see support for Jill Stein as a way of helping Donald Trump to win? This was clearly the case with Sean Spicer, who was with the Trump campaign when he sent these tweets in  support of Jill Stein. Could that have also been the motivation of others directly associated with the campaign and the Green Party?

Jill Stein was on RT a great many times in 2016. Not so much since.

What about Jill Stein's biggest foreign supporter, Vladimir Putin? What was his motivation? During the 2016 US Presidential season, the English language content from the so-called progressive propaganda outlets he controls, RT America, Russia Today, Sputnik, Ruptly, and many smaller ones, quite openly and vigorously promoted the Jill Stein campaign. I have written about this before, they gave her tiny campaign a lot of coverage. Ms. Stein even bragged "We look to RT for access to the American public." Yes, Moscow gave you coverage Sean Spicer could only beg for from major US media on your behalf. The question is: Why was Putin so helpful?

Very early in the campaign season, Vladimir Putin prominently invited Jill Stein to a seat at the head table. Few knew at the time that a representative of his preferred candidate, Mike Flynn for Donald Trump, was seated to his right. That was in October 2015 when the campaigns were gearing up.

Almost three years later... 

Probably no question asked in the press conference after the Putin-Trump secret summit has received as much attention as the one asked by reporter Jeff Mason of Vladimir Putin. The answer was a blunt admission that he wanted Trump to win. To refresh, the question and answer went like this:

Jeff Mason: “President Putin, did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?”

Vladimir Putin: “Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.–Russia relationship back to normal.”

Putin could have easily lied, and said "No, No, as you know, we always favored the Green Party candidate." That would have been entirely consistent with the propaganda coming out of Russia in 2016. If he had done that, he could have thrown the media into a frenzy, thrown a valuable spotlight on Jill Stein and the US Greens, all while throwing a lifeline to Donald Trump in his Russian collusion troubles. Instead, this foreign head of state did something that is foreign to our president, he spoke truthfully. He said he wanted Trump to win all along.

Maybe Ms. Stein, and her non-Trump loving supporters, should think long and hard about what that means. Maybe, all those on the white-Left who retweeted, re-posted, and "liked" the pro-Stein/anti-Clinton Russian propaganda, should reflect on this for a while. Regardless of what they saw their role as, as a practical matter, they were colluding with a white nationalist state power in Russia to put a white nationalist cabal in power in the United States. They seem find it so easy to label freedom fighters in struggles they don't understand "pawns of imperialists." Maybe they should take a long look in the mirror.

The final election results show that if Jill Stein supporters in just three states had voted for Clinton instead, we wouldn't have this white supremacist cabal in the White House now - with all that has meant so far, and will mean. But she might be right, many, maybe even most of her supporters would have stayed home or voted for Trump if not for her. For many so-called progressives, the Jill Stein candidacy was just a way to support Donald Trump with a clear conscience. For Putin it was a way to put a lot of money behind Trump while maintaining his "progressive" credentials.

This data is from Politico [updated 22 Nov. 2016 - PA updated 2 Dec from http://www.electionreturns.pa.gov/ ] :

Candidate	Count	%	Michigan [16]	Wisconsin [10]	Pennsylvania [20]
Donald Trump	61,201,031	47%	2,279,805	1,409,467	2,955,671
Hillary Clinton	62,523,126	48%	2,268,193	1,382,210	2,906,128
Difference			11,612	27,257	49,543
Jill Stein	802,119	0.7%	50,700	30,980	49,678

Syria is the Paris Commune of the 21st Century!

Click here for our posts on the 2016 US Election Click here for a list of our other blogs on Syria Click here for a list of our other blogs on Libya