The endless and probably unanswerable debate over whether the Green Party in fact aided Trump’s victory has nearly completely obscured the arguably more serious point: that they openly wanted to.
As they did after Nader in 2000, Greens are already trying to revise history and deny this inarguable fact. Here’s a compilation of the evidence with links to the full context in case you encounter this; hopefully it will persuade some grassroots Greens to demand new leadership with a less Pyrrhic strategy.
Note: As cherrypicking is such a widespread and deceptive tool, here also is the list of corresponding statements found from Green leaders on ways the Democratic candidate is a lesser evil than the Republican candidate:
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Green Party Leadership
Bush-Gore 2000
Ralph Nader, Green Party presidential candidate, 2000
[Q: If someone put a gun to his head and told him to vote for either Gore or Bush, which he would choose?] Bush… If you want the parties to diverge from one another, have Bush win.
[Q: Does that mean you would not have a problem providing the margin of defeat for Gore?] I would not — not at all. I’d rather have a provocateur than an anesthetizer in the White House.
[After lambasting Gore] If it were a choice between a provocateur and an ‘anesthetizer,’ I’d rather have a provocateur. It would mobilize us.
[Q: Would it bother you that…Al Gore lost the election?] No, not at all… There may be a cold shower for four years that would help the Democratic Party… It doesn’t matter who is in the White House. [Q: Would [Al Gore] not be better on [environmental and consumer] issues than George W. Bush?] …No… regulatory agencies under Clinton/Gore are as bad or worse than under Reagan/Bush…
Trump-Clinton 2016
The two party tyranny that blocks voter choices and dominates the political scene on behalf of big business needs to be broken up and Trump is the one to do it. It takes a billionaire. Ross Perot got 19 million votes as an independent candidate in 1992. And Trump has every possibility of doing the same, and by the same token, opening up opportunities for multi-party systems; more voices, more choices… He is with the progressives on challenging the rigged trade agreements… it's a breath of fresh air… By being brazen, Trump is punctuating the progressive agenda -- the progressive critique of big business, Wall Street over Main Street… I’ve always said the only people who can break up a two party tyranny that stifles the voices of small parties and independent candidates are billionaires, and we got one called Trump.
Jill Stein, Green Party presidential candidate, 7/10/2016
It's outrageous that she's not being prosecuted and indicted… More Clintonism is not the answer to Trump. It's very important that we actually stand up, and if we have to take some hits, we take some hits, but we've got to build our power…
The scary things, the horrific things that Donald Trump says, Hillary Clinton has already done.
[Q: How would you feel if your role in this election helped put Donald Trump in the White House?] …The answer to neofascism is stopping neoliberalism. Putting another Clinton in the White House will fan the flames of this right-wing extremism. We have known that for a long time, ever since Nazi Germany.
What we fear from Trump we've gotten from Clinton. Trump talks hate for Muslims, but Clinton's wars killed 1M+ Muslims. Both unfit to serve.
Clinton's saber-rattling against Russia, a nuclear power, is an existential threat to human survival. She is dangerous.
Part of the problem, you know, with Hillary's abuse of the rules, she was sort of too big, you know, too big to jail...
Donald Trump, I think, will have a lot of trouble moving things through Congress. 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.
If Trump's campaign is flailing, does a "spoiler" vote even exist anymore?
What we're worried Trump will do, Obama has done...
Hillary Clinton's foreign policy is much scarier than Donald Trump's, who does not want to go to war with Russia. #PeaceOffensive
Hillary Clinton is a disastrous nuclear threat right now... this emerges as the clearest and most present danger.
[Question: Why do you think a nuclear war is more likely under a President Clinton than a President Trump?] If you watched the debate the other night, you would have heard Trump saying that he’s looking for collaboration with Putin… I consider the threat of nuclear war not trivial at all, and this is one of the most clear and present dangers to our surroundings. Yeah, climate change is horrific, but it’s not happening tomorrow.
Hillary Clinton wants to start an air war over Syria… on the issue of war and nuclear weapons and the potential for nuclear war, it's actually Hillary's policies which are much scarier than Donald Trump's. He does not want to go to war with Russia. He wants to seek modes of working together, which is the route we need to follow, not to go into confrontation and nuclear war with Russia. [Q: I just want to ask Jill if she will take her name in battleground states so she doesn't turn it over to Donald Trump.] Steve, are you okay with nuclear war? How are you going to feel if we go into nuclear war?
What’s scarier than Donald Trump? Hillary Clinton’s plans to gut Social Security.
Donald Trump has said he wants to bans Muslims, but Hillary Clinton has already bombed Muslims.
The FBI has re-opened the Clinton investigation. [False.]
Ajamu Baraka, Green Party VP candidate, 10/6/2016
People talk about the coming of neofascism under Trump but the foundation for neofascism has already been created under the Obama admin.
Ajamu Baraka, 10/15/2016 [Jill Stein retweeted]
John Pilger: Why Hillary Clinton Is More Dangerous Than Donald Trump [which states: "Donald Trump is a symptom of this, but he is also a maverick. He says the invasion of Iraq was a crime; he doesn't want to go to war with Russia and China. The danger to the rest of us is not Trump, but Hillary Clinton. She is no maverick. ]
Ajamu Baraka, 10/16/2016 [Jill Stein retweeted]
Expecting people of color to fear Donald Trump after all we’ve been through the last 200 years, is absurd.
Donald Trump has somewhat of a commitment to lessening tensions between say the U.S. and Russia than we’ve seen from the Clinton campaign.
The #SteinBaraka camp. does not waste time focusing on Trump's misogyny or scapegoating Russia. We focus on People, Planet & Peace!
I'm more concerned about another 8 years of neoliberal policies than I am with Trump. It's our duty to fight to build a real alternative.
Even Trump knows that the #TPP will undermine the US economy & empower the elite's control over governments.
Ajamu Baraka, 11/9/2016 [on Trump victory post-election]
I'm not in any way too concerned… we're going to be all right.
Jillian Thomas, Social Media Director of the Stein/Baraka Campaign, 10/31/2016
[Posted by Jill Stein on Stein's personal Facebook page] A Clinton presidency is DANGEROUS… So yes: If a Trump presidency would mean that we have to fight ignorants in the streets—I'm ready for that… I feel empowered to do the things I know we have to do to truly fix our system, even if that means taking a left turn to get on the right path.
David Cobb, Stein/Baraka campaign manager, 11/4/2016
[A]ny claims that the Green Party has endorsed or otherwise encouraged support for Donald Trump...is a bald-faced lie. [A statement anyone can easily see is, well, a “bald-faced lie.”]
Green Party Prominent Supporters, 2016
Cornel West, author, keynote speaker at Green Party national convention, 7/18/2016
[Q: For those who say it’s only Hillary Clinton who could defeat that, what is your response?] …What Donald Trump talks about in the abstract has actually been concretely enacted under neoliberal regimes of the Democratic Party… this idea that somehow we’ve got to opt for a neoliberal disaster as the only option vis-à-vis the neofascist catastrophe… I can deal with catastrophe, not by panicking and being driven by fear, but I can look the catastrophe in the face and still tell the truth and still go down swinging with a smile…
There's a cost to violating principles, even if—even if there’s also a cost to yourself, even if you don’t like the risk, which seems to be getting very small, but the risk that Donald Trump becomes president, that one has to have a line somewhere.
Julian Assange speaking with John Pilger, Russia Today, 11/4/2016
["Pilger also questioned Assange over increasingly frequent accusations from the Clinton camp, and Western media, that WikiLeaks is looking to swing next week’s US presidential election in favor of Donald Trump – perhaps at Russia’s behest."] My analysis is that Trump would not be permitted to win.
Chris Hedges, writer and Russia Today host, 8/4/2016
Trump is this kind of grotesque figure. He’s like the used car salesman who rolls back the speedometer. But Hillary Clinton is like, you know, the managers of Goldman Sachs.
Jimmy Dore, popular comic and commentator, 10/29/2016
Why Trump Might Be Better For Our Future Than Hillary: If Donald Trump became president he would actually be a positive for the progressives because he puts an ugly face on the horrible policies of neoliberalism, and they're easy to oppose. Whereas if Barack Obama, who's right now pushing the TPP, he puts a nice face on the TPP, he splits the natural opposition to it, meaning the Democratic Party. And so we're actually worse off with a guy like Barack Obama, whereas with a clown like Donald Trump you could stand up against him and he fractures his own party.
The New Progressive Voice, 11/6/2016
Why do we need to vote for Hillary Clinton? We could vote for Donald Trump. That will even more frustrate and invigorate the progressive movement… [Plays video of Cenk Uygur warning of potential societal collapse] Not our problem… The biggest way to not have the monster in your basement is to let it out, but you want to keep it in there… [Uygur points out Trump doesn't believe in climate change.] It doesn't make a difference whether you believe in climate change or not, what matters is that we as progressives respond to that particular president… at least with Donald Trump you know exactly what you're getting… With Trump, we know exactly what we're up against. As I said before, a snake in the open is a lot less dangerous than a snake in hiding.
Why Donald Trump is not as horrible as Hillary Clinton ... and why you should vote for Jill Stein: Hillary will… promote and spread more chaos, death, and destruction across the globe… Donald Trump as president will do 'less damage'… Trump will fall flat on his face. His trademark bull-in-a-china-shop approach to making deals has no chance of success in Washington DC. He has no support -- his own party has all but disowned him -- no connections, at least not the political ones necessary for promoting his agenda... [S]he is completely insane… if voting for Jill Stein ends up electing Donald Trump. . . So be it. At least we'll come out of it alive. And . . . We'll have four more years to figure out how America got so screwed up.
Pilger: In my opinion, Hillary Clinton, if I'm to guess at it, is by far the more dangerous candidate of the two. Draitser: Yeah… the dangers of a Trump presidency… are open questions, and in many ways, sort of a wildcard, whereas I feel like Hillary Clinton is sort of a known quantity.
Eric Zeusse, columnist for Russia Insider, 8/16/2016
Why Sanders Supporters Should Vote for Trump: I’m a Bernie Sanders Voter, And Here’s Why I’ll Vote Trump…She’s actually the anti-Bernie, the opposite of Bernie… Donald Trump is, perhaps, as much of a closeted progressive, as Hillary Clinton is a closeted fascist… Perhaps no U.S. Presidential candidate [speaking of Trump] has spoken in such depth about foreign affairs… Though Clinton verbally endorses the view that global warming is the world’s biggest problem, she doesn’t care about it…Trump is no conservative when the issue is global warming… Trump’s stated positions are basically like Sanders’s… Trump is, if anything, too honest for his own good… "Who Is the Arch Racist: The Donald or Hillary?” the answer to that question is clearly Clinton, not clearly Trump.
Green Party unofficial fundraising site selling Elect Jill Stein T-shirts, 11/6/2016
Anon has given the blessing, vote Trump to stop Hillary!
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