Photo by Bart Everson | CC BY 2.0
We have the potential of an Edward R Murrow moment coming up if Jill Stein is called before a public hearing in the House or Senate.
I was a supporter of Jill Stein for president in 2016 as I was also a Green Party congressional candidate in Maryland. I campaigned for her, spoke at same platforms, and even planned a fundraising house party for her that was derailed by internal egos at work. I voted for her but that was the first and only time. In 2012 I voted for Stephen Durham of the Freedom Socialist Party, also being one of his 10 electors for him in this state.
I no longer support Jill. For one, as a Green she had a major flaw, a common ailment among many Greens, unfortunately many in leadership positions. She wanted the Democrats to win. She endorsed Sanders in the California primary election. Some would say that was strategically smart because it could have endeared her to his supporters, if he were to lose. But what if he won?
Jill’s measly 1% final total would not have even registered if Sanders were to have been the nominee. In essence, she supported the one candidate that would make her and more importantly, the Green Party, irrelevant for ages.
After the election, she took the bait from Democratic Party operatives and sued for a recount in the only states that could have made a difference for Clinton, not states where Green numbers may have been affected, as none were for both parties. And even most recently, she and her Rasputin campaign manager, David Cobb, who takes anything Green and turns it Blue, attempted a coup within the national Green Party steering committee by ridding it of members on the left. Their attack on Andrea Merida Cuellar was a direct action related to her being the one person who spearheaded the opposition to make the Green Party a financial shill for the Democratic Party in the recount vote.
But now it’s almost 9 months after that fateful day and Jill’s back in the news. As Margaret Kimberly of Black Agenda Report made it so clear, ‘Democrats hate the left more than they hate the right.’ What is going on, as part of the anti-Russia McCarthyite hysteria, is that there is a picture of Stein with Putin in 2015 celebrating RT. She’s actually sitting at the same table. That she said no words to him is irrelevant. She flipped the election. It’s so clear now. She’s in cahoots with the Kremlin!
As Kimberly quotes Congressman Adam Schiff on Jill’s presence, “Jill Stein was also in Russia attending the RT function, so we’re going to need to look at any efforts the Russians made through whatever means to influence our elections.”
Stein should go willingly to the hearing in open court. Having not an ounce of influence over Putin, or him over her, or of even the overall outcome of the election, she should savor the opportunity to put Schiff and his worthless colleagues in their place. Come and sit with an attorney. Make a big production of it as if it’s on par with the Watergate hearings, where the public anxiously waits for the Alexander Butterfield moment of learning about secret tapes, or watching Senator Ervin, the Senator from North Carolina and defender of Jim Crow laws, wiggle his furry eyebrows. What a show the Watergate hearings were!
Here’s an opportunity in either the back and forth of questions and responses, or better yet in the opening, call them out for their mindless hysteria, dragging such an inconsequential witness to the stand for pure political theatre and then get up and leave.
That’s what you pay lawyers for, isn’t it, to stick around and make excuses?
It would make Murrow proud.
