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To some, Green Party presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein was little more than a spoiler last November, attracting liberal voters away from Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. To others, she was a principled truth-teller who levelled a necessary critique of a moribund two-party political system.

Stein has recently been in the news because her name appeared in a Senate Judiciary Committee document request regarding collusion between Russiaand the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump. That revived longstanding, if unfounded, suspicions that Stein was somehow associated with elements within the Kremlin. Those suspicions stem, in good part, from a photograph of Stein taken in Moscow in 2015, where she was attending a conference. It shows her sitting at a dinner table with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and former Trump adviserMichael T. Flynn.

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Steinmade headlines this week after an MSNBC interview in which she explained North Korea's nuclear-weapons program as a more-or-less rational response to perceived aggression by the West. Those headlines, were, for the most part, not kind. But that doesn't seem to bother Stein. When I caught up with her earlier this week, she was uncowed in her views of Pyongyang and, well, pretty much everything else.

Lets start with a story I wrote a week-and-a-half ago, and which you called fake news. Your name was mentioned in the document request from the Senate Judiciary Committee to the lawyers of Paul Manafort and Donald Trump, Jr. Do you have any idea why your name appeared there?

It wasnt actually fake news. I slightly exaggerated in calling it fake news. Shall we say the sensationalist headline ["Russian Plot to Elect Trump IncludedJill Stein, According to Latest Gleeful Twitter Theory"] stopped just short of fake news?

Id like to know why you think your name was there with Russian oligarchs and Trump campaign operatives.

I think its there for the same reason that that photo keeps circulating without a single fact. There was no translator at the dinner. Putin came in very briefly. Maybe he was there for 10or 15minutes before he gave a speech in Russian. There was no translator. Nobody was introduced to anybody. My conversation was actually with the guy sitting next to me, a German diplomat.

My clear message at that conference was to challenge both U.S. and Russian militarism.

The facts do not support whatsoever the contention that I was there for some nefarious purpose, or for some kind of backroom deal. I received zero sponsorship to be there. No payment. There was nothing compromising about my being in Moscow.

Did you talk to Michael Flynn at that dinner?

He introduced himself to me just before we sat down, and I began to give him my elevator speech about the peace offensive in the Middle East, which was my policy throughout the campaign. Our conversation very quickly ended at that. Maybe two sentences about the peace offensive, which he was not interested in.

Did you have any other contact with anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign that could have led the Senate Judiciary to reasonably suspect collusion?

Zero.

Zero?

Zero. Politically, we couldnt be further apart. Culturally, we couldnt be further apart. It makes me laugh to even think of the suggestion.

But you did want to defeat Hillary Clinton, so in that sense

Well, let me say, that is fake news. That is based on an article, this contention that I thought Hillary was worse than Trump. I never said that.[Suggestions that Stein was a Trump supporter were indeeddebunked as fake news.]

My summary statement was always that I would feel terrible if Donald Trump was elected, and I would feel terrible if Hillary Clinton was elected. I feel most terrible about a voting system that restricts voters to two untrusted, widely-disliked choices.

I have never said that Hillary Clinton was better or worse than Donald Trump. I entirely avoid those comparisons.

Do you believe some of the Twitter reaction to seeing your name in those Senate Judiciary documents was rooted in the fact that many people still blame you, however rightly or not, for Clintons defeat?

Greens do not vote for Democrats. Wishing that pigs fly doesnt make them fly. You have to do the numbers. You cant just move Green votes into the Democratic column. If only pigs would fly. They dont.

But do you believe that in some way you delegitimized Clinton in the eyes of young progressives and in that way paved the way for a Trump victory?

Remember, most people who voted for Donald Trump were not voting for him. They were actually voting against the Clintons and the legacy of neoliberalism thats been throwing the American people under the bus.

Finding ways to rationalize the suppression of opposition voices is not what Democracy needs. Democracy needs more voices and more choices, especially at a time when the Democratic and Republican parties are being widely rejected by the American public.

Do you still think now, six months into the Trump presidency, that a President Clinton would have been no different than a President Trump?

I never said they were no different. Thats another trap I have learned to avoid. What I said was they are different, theyre not just different enough, to save your job, to save your life and to save the planet and the climate. We shouldnt be forced to choose between two candidates who dont meet our needs.

Youve mentioned fake news several times during our conversation. Do you believe that Russia promulgated fake news during the presidential campaign?

I have seen conflicting reports about that, and I have not been following it closely enough to give you a definitive opinion.

Do you support the recent passage of tougher sanctions against Russia that President Trump will reportedly sign? [Trump signed the sanctions Wednesday while calling it "seriously flawed."]

I think the sanctions are not going to accomplish what we need, which is to protect our election system. We need to protect it against not only hostile foreign powers, we need to protect it also against domestic partisans, against lone gangsters, and against the private election software companies who also have skin in this game. We need blanket protection. That is why I initiated a recount [after the presidential election].

Let me push back on that a little. The Koch Brothers, as far as we know, have not hacked any elections. The intelligence community has determined unanimously that, to some degree, Russia has influenced, to some degree, this past presidential election. Are you agreeing with President Trump that we should be doubtful of that assessment?

Theres not a lot I agree with President Trump on. What Im saying is that the story is not over. Unfortunately, we have seen our security agencies make some errors in the past, like weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Lets say Russia did it. Simply punishing Russia doesnt keep make voting systems secure.

Doesnt it dissuade them from doing it in 2018 and 2020?

I dont think so. Well, it might dissuade them, but there are all kinds of other people waiting in line. We need an international treaty to end this intensive cyber warfare.

Some might call you an apologist for Russia for saying what you just said. So lets anticipate that charge. How do you answer it?

I think we are in an era of McCarthyism. If you think the Russians are the only ones committing cybersecurity intrusions, I say good luck to you. Time to start reading the cybersecurity literature out there.

After your MSNBC interview earlier this week, some accused you of excusing North Koreas nuclear ambitions. Id like for you to respond.

I suggest you take a look at [Secretary of State]Rex Tillersons statement, where he went much further than me. I think some people fall victim to this foreigner-bashing, the regime-change playbook. This is how you prepare the nation to exercise regime change. Let me ask you: How did that work out for us in Libya? And how did that work out for us in Iraq? Regime change is not a great idea, but part of regime change is absolutely dehumanizing and demonizing the person youre about to go after.

Now, thats not to defend the human rights record of North Korea, which is off the charts. Nonetheless, we gotta be able to deal with people as people. Thats what Rex Tillerson and [former Director of National Intelligence]James Clapper are saying now.

Didnt President Obama try strategic patience? That appears to have not been entirely successful.

Unfortunately, strategic patience did not include negotiation. Negotiation has not been tried since the mid-90s. And, actually, it worked very well. We basically froze the North Koreans nuclear program for eight years, until George W. Bush came along and declared the Axis of Evil. And not only did he declare the Axis of Evil, he initiated a first strike nuclear attack policy against North Korea. This is why North Korea is backed into a corner, feeling they need a nuclear weapon if theyre going to survive.

Thats what the war exercises have been about. We have been conducting war exercises for well over 10 years. These war exercises essentially rehearse dropping nuclear bombs on North Korea.

You can imagine that they might be feeling defensive.

If we back off from that position, history tells us, it works pretty well.

Would you be willing to serve as an envoy to North Korea to try to broker some sort of deal with Pyongyang?

Would I? Yes, I mean, I dont think Im the person with the credentials to do it. I understand there is a movement afoot to send Rex Tillerson there for that purpose. I think thatd be great. Id be more than happy to accompany him, but I dont think thats gonna happen.

My last question for you. I want to understand why you think youve been the victim of so much criticism from the left and center left. The Democratic establishment has blamed you for its losses. Why do they continue to return to you?

This is par for the course when youre part of the political opposition. If Im perceived as a threat, I take that as a compliment. The Democrats are not doing a lot of introspection about why they have lost support. Things arent changing inside the Democratic Party. And a lot of people are losing patience with that. Part of their defense, I think, is to try to discredit the faces of opposition.

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Russia Investigation: Jill Stein Explains Her Relationship to Putin, Trump and Hillary Clinton - Newsweek