Green Party's Jill Stein: Trump’s a 'Racist' and Clinton's Not a True Progressive

Stein criticized the policies of both Trump and Clinton.

ByABC News
July 25, 2016, 1:36 PM
Protesters yell as DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., arrives for a Florida delegation breakfast, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention.
Protesters yell as DNC Chairwoman, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., arrives for a Florida delegation breakfast, July 25, 2016, in Philadelphia, during the first day of the Democratic National Convention.
Matt Slocum/AP Photo

— -- Jill Stein believes the American people deserve another choice between “a racist billionaire and a proponent of the billionaire club.”

As the presumptive presidential nominee for the far-Left Green Party, Stein wants Donald Trump to be stopped. But she doesn’t think Hillary Clinton is the best alternative.

“Donald Trump, he is a racist, a xenophobic, anti-woman, just anti-working people and it’s very important that that movement, that right wing extremism needs to be stopped,” Stein said in an interview with ABC News at the Democratic National Convention today.

Stein says a “true progressive agenda” is needed to stop Trump but argues that Clinton doesn’t fit the bill, condemning the presumptive Democratic nominee who she says won the nomination through “very underhanded and backstabbing techniques." Stein pointed to the newly leaked emails that appeared to show favoritism within the DNC for Clinton as evidence that Clinton "sabotaged" the campaign of former rival Bernie Sanders.

“Even the majority of Hillary supporters don’t actually support Hillary,” Stein said. “They just don’t want Donald Trump. And the majority of Donald Trump supporters don’t support him, they don’t like Hillary.”

“What’s wrong with this picture?” she asked rhetorically. “Democracy is not what we don’t want; Democracy needs a moral compass of what we do want.”

Addressing the critique that her campaign could actually help elect Donald Trump by taking votes from Clinton, Stein rejected the idea and instead put the blame on Clinton.

“It’s Hillary Clinton, because she sabotaged Bernie Sanders campaign,” Stein said. “If there someone to blame I think it goes squarely into the camp of Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party.”

After winning the nomination through what Stein characterized as “very underhanded and backstabbing techniques,” Stein said Clinton’s choice of running mate in Tim Kaine now “seals the deal” in an “abandonment of the progressive agenda."

For those Sanders supporters who aren’t willing to unite behind Clinton, Stein invites them to join her own campaign.

“I was at a meeting of Bernie Sanders supporters, approximately 800 delegates, who were wildly enthusiastic to hear that they continue the miraculous work that they’ve done, changing the political landscape, with the Green Party, with my campaign,” she said.

The door is also open, she said, to Sanders himself, who she called on “to rescind his endorsement of Clinton and the campaign that stabbed him in the back."

Asked if she would consider giving Sanders the vice presidential slot on her ticket, Stein said “everything is on the table as far as Bernie Sanders” but that he has yet to respond to the call from the Green Party.

ABC News' Arlette Saenz contributed to the report.

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