Democrats to swing states: A vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Trump

Democrats are arguing in a new pitch to swing state voters that a vote for Green Party nominee Jill Stein would only help elect former President Trump. 

An ad released Thursday says Stein was “key” to Trump’s victory in the battleground states in 2016 that clinched him the presidency and is “not sorry” for it, citing an interview she gave to Newsweek in September in which she talked about wanting to deny Vice President Harris the White House. 

“That’s why a vote for Stein is really a vote for Trump,” the narrator states. 

The ad shows a photo of Stein slowly morphing into a photo of Trump. It also includes comments that Trump gave about Stein during a rally in June in which he said, “I like her very much. You know why? She takes 100 percent from them,” referring to the Democrats. 

The ad will air in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the three states that won Trump the presidency in 2016 and will likely help decide the winner again this year, and on cable throughout the country.

Democrats have long argued that votes for Stein and other third-party candidates would only serve as a spoiler and hand the presidency to Trump. The Democratic National Committee (DNC), which paid for the ad, has a team specifically concentrated on pushing back against third-party and independent candidates who could take votes away from Harris. 

Although Stein has generally received no more than 1 percent support in most polls, every vote could be meaningful in an election as close as next month’s is expected to be.

Stein is running for president for a third time, previously serving as the Green Party nominee in 2012 and 2016. 

“Just like in 2016, Jill Stein can’t win the presidency, but she will help decide who does. Donald Trump knows that she’s his key to the White House — that’s why he praises her spoiler candidacy and why his MAGA allies are working to prop up her campaign,” DNC senior adviser Mary Beth Cahill said in a statement on the ad. “The stakes of this election are too high to allow Stein to spoil it.” 

Stein has argued the Democrats can’t win the election and particularly pressed the party to change its stance on the war between Israel and Hamas to not alienate Arab American and Muslim voters.

Stein’s campaign said in a statement to The Hill that Democrats’ “smear campaign is the best publicity we could ask for.” The campaign argued that Harris could restore her base if she agreed to an arms embargo on Israel, but “apparently she prefers killing Palestinian children to winning the election.”

“No amount of lying campaign ads is going to distract from the simple truth that Americans revile this bipartisan genocide,” the statement said.

Updated: 9:15 a.m.