Yesterday, Ramsey Reid, the campaign manager for the DNC’s Independent and Third-Party Campaign, joined “The Hill Rising” to discuss Jill Stein’s spoiler campaign and the DNC’s efforts to make it clear that a vote for Stein is a vote for Donald Trump. This follows last week’s release of “Crucial,” the DNC’s first television ad calling out Jill Stein as a spoiler for Donald Trump. 

DNC Campaign Manager Ramsey Reid on “The Hill Rising” with Nomiki Konst

On Jill Stein unapologetically helping Donald Trump win in 2016 and how she’s willing to do it again in 2024: 

Ramsey Reid: “It starts with 2016, where she campaigned on Trump and Clinton being the same — where she won 132,000 votes in the blue wall states, and that was more than Trump’s margin, 77,000 votes total. That’s what Trump’s margin was in those three states. And then Trump was elected. She helped deliver him to the White House. And then she watched him try to implement the Muslim ban. She watched him appoint Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, who dismantled climate regulation. She watched him preside over a horrific public health response, you know, telling people to inject bleach. And then she decided, great. Sounds good. Badge of honor. Very happy to do it. Happy to do it again. And so that’s what’s so disturbing. And so for us, we know that she has absolutely no path to victory.”

On Republican efforts to prop up Jill Stein and Cornel West’s ballot access efforts and litigation: 

Reid: “What we’ve been focused on is holding these candidates accountable to the same rules that we have to play by, and that we think that that’s in the best interest of democracy. The real question to us around ballot access has been why Republicans have been so interested in propping them up and helping them get on the ballot.

“We’ve seen Republican consultants helping Jill Stein and Cornel West with ballot access. We have seen Jill Stein hire Trump’s former personal lawyer to represent her, Jay Sekulow, a guy notably who’s chief counsel at ACLJ, that, after protecting the Muslim ban, he defended Trump in impeachment proceedings. So it’s a real question to us why Republicans are so focused on propping up these third party candidates. And it’s one of the reasons that we’ve been so focused on holding them accountable to the same rules that we have to follow.” 

On Jill Stein’s attacks on Vice President Harris while pushing MAGA talking points: 

Reid: “What you see at her events are surrogates and endorsers who go out there and openly admit that she has no path to victory, and that success for them is in stopping Kamala Harris. So when you couple that with the fact that she has no regret over her role in 2016, there’s no other way to to view this other than a vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Trump. We want to make sure that voters understand that when they are considering voting for Jill Stein, that they’re voting for Trump. And if you want Donald Trump back in the White House, by all means, Jill Stein is a perfectly reasonable vote. But if you don’t want Trump, then you can’t take a risk voting for Jill Stein. 

Reid: “[This is something] really important with Jill Stein, which is that she attacks Harris and she attacks Democrats relentlessly. She never attacks Donald Trump. […] I think it’s pretty unquestionable that Jill Stein only has smoke for Democrats. […] If you look at her email program, you look at her events, you look at her remarks, she is overwhelmingly attacking Kamala Harris and attacking Democrats. That really tells you what you need to know when you couple that with the fact that Donald Trump says, ‘I like Jill Stein, she’s one of my favorite politicians. She takes 100% from from them,’ When you couple that with the fact that she openly admits and willingly takes Republicans help with her ballot access, that she hires consultants who […] were at the Capitol on January 6th, when she says that she would consider pardoning people who were at the Capitol on January 6th, pardoning Trump. She pushes MAGA talking points. She downplays a lot of the things that are really at risk in this election. She was asked about Project 2025 and downplayed it as propaganda. And so I think it’s pretty obvious that Jill Stein is in the race as a spoiler to help Trump. And that’s what we want voters to know.” 

On the DNC’s strategy to call out Jill Stein:

Reid: “We’re not going to take anything for granted. We know what happened in 2016, and we are absolutely going to make sure that voters understand what the risks are, how close the election is, and that their vote counts.”

On Jill Stein’s defense of Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin: 

Nomiki Konst: “I mean, if you care about the Mideast, we also have to care about Syria. And there’s this Assad tie that has been really concerning. And I think it’s important to illustrate, if you’re going to vote for somebody, we also have to understand who that person is. I just don’t feel like folks who are thinking about voting for Jill Stein really understand who this person is.”  

[6:27] 

Reid: “Jill Stein claims a moral high ground, but we have seen her repeatedly fail to call Assad a war criminal. She has failed to denounce his actions, and she’s downplayed the role that he had in the Syrian uprising. I think she even questioned its legitimacy. She speculates that the deaths of thousands of people in Syria were a false flag operation.  

“But that’s sort of this repeated pattern of behavior from Jill Stein. We see it with Vladimir Putin, where she also has dodged and evaded opportunities to call Putin a war criminal. She uses Kremlin talking points […] The Russians propped her up in 2016 and while they’re actively attacking American democracy now.” 

Konst: “Well, she went to that dinner, that famous dinner […] I think there’s a lot of folks who have questions about Russia’s influence, but it’s undeniable that they have some influence in our elections. But she went to that dinner famously at the RT dinner, which is part of Russian state media in Russia, sitting next to Mike Flynn and Vladimir Putin.” 

On Jill Stein not having a record on the issues she claims to champion:
Konst: “What really concerns me as a progressive who sees her pop up every four years is just how she represents herself as an environmentalist, but as someone who’s actually worked in the environmental movement, pretty much every environmental leader from Bill McKibben onwards, the greatest environmental leaders say, she has been nowhere in the movement. And yet she pops up every four years, now with conservative Trump consultants.”