Stein slams Trump and Clinton following final debate

WASHINGTON (First published by Talk Media News) – Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein slammed Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in a Facebook video forum Wednesday night following the third and final debate of the election cycle.

“What a shameful reflection on what our political system has come to that so much time has been spent on who’s a bigger crook and whose foundation is a scam,” Stein said.

Stein, a physician and vocal social-justice advocate, garnered an estimated audience of about 12,500.

She and Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson were denied permission to participate in any of the three presidential debates following a mid-September decision by the Commission on Presidential Debates.

The commission limits participation to candidates who poll at a minimum of 15 percent nationally. At the time, Stein was polling at about 3 percent and Johnson around 8 percent. Those numbers have not changed significantly since then.

Shortly after that decision Stein told TMN at a Baltimore rally that she was not surprised the Commission rendered she and Johnson persona-non-grata.

“The Debate Commission – a private corporation run by the Democratic and Republican parties – has decided not to let any candidate in except from the Democratic and Republican parties; imagine my surprise,” Stein said.

Stein protested her exclusion from the first presidential debate on Sept. 26 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. by speaking on campus with reporters that morning but was later asked to leave due to credentialing issues.

Stein suggested Wednesday night that neither Trump nor Clinton could be trusted to keep American jobs from being shipped abroad.

“While Donald Trump in theory opposes the trade deals that send jobs overseas, what does he do? . . . Donald and Hillary, if you are really against the Trans Pacific Partnership, stand up against the lame duck passage,” Stein asserted.

Stein also suggested that both Clinton and Trump support essentially the same immigration policy.

“We know that Hillary has long supported a fence, Donald supports a wall,” Stein said. “Borders do not close unless you also close off trade, you close off rivers . . . it just doesn’t happen. Borders are porous things.”

Gary Johnson said in an interview following the debate that he was disappointed neither Trump nor Clinton addressed entitlement reform or marijuana legalization.

“During all the debates, we had like four minutes tonight spent on the deficit,” Johnson told Reason TV. “Four minutes out of all the debates. And then there were really just a couple of minutes spent on the entitlements – Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security – when these are really, really huge issues.”

“And not mentioned once were drugs,” Johnson said. “Not mentioned once was the legalization of marijuana and the fact that the number one category of arrests in this country in the last year is marijuana-related. That is flabbergasting and of course completely missing.”