Political Memes

https://www.newsweek.com/jill-stein-ties-vladimir-putin-explained-1842620

They added: "The Senate Intelligence Committee later investigated the trip and found no wrongdoing whatsoever. Dr. Stein's commitment to diplomacy is more needed than ever and stands in stark contrast to the two warmongering ruling parties, which are driving us toward WWIII [World War III] and draining resources urgently needed here at home."

The event featuring Stein and Putin was a December 2015 gala in Moscow in celebration of the Russian state television channel RT's tenth anniversary. The channel has been banned in several countries for spreading Russian propaganda since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The channel regularly featured Stein during her 2016 campaign. When asked about the dinner by NBC that year, Stein said it was a "shameful commentary" on U.S. media that she had received more air time on Russian news as a third party candidate.

Speaking to The Intercept in 2017, she said the notion that it was an "intimate roundtable" was "mythology," and that Putin and his associates "weren't at the table for very long." Stein said that "nobody introduced anybody to anybody" and that she "didn't hear any words exchanged between English speakers and Russians" due to the lack of a translator.

Stein said that Putin had appeared to make a speech and left immediately after. "Nobody cared to make introductions. This wasn't intended to be a discussion of any sort," she told the outlet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jill_Stein

Russia probe and controversy On December 18, 2017, The Washington Post reported that the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking at Stein's presidential campaign for potential "collusion with the Russians."[90] The Stein campaign released a statement stating it would work with investigators.[91]

In December 2018, two reports commissioned by the US Senate found that the Internet Research Agency boosted Stein's candidacy through social media posts, targeting African-American voters in particular. After consulting the two reports, NBC News reporter Robert Windrem said that nothing suggested Stein knew about the operation, but added that "the Massachusetts physician ha[d] long been criticized for her support of international policies that mirror Russian foreign policy goals." Windrem reported that his publisher (NBC News) had found that in 2015 and 2016 there had been over 100 favorable stories about Stein on Russian state-owned media networks RT and Sputnik.[92] In 2015, Stein was photographed dining at the same table as Russian president Vladimir Putin at the RT 10th anniversary gala in Moscow, leading to controversy.[93][94] Stein contended that she had no contact with Putin at the dinner and described the situation as a "non-event".[95]

In an official statement, Stein called one of the reports, the one authored by New Knowledge, "dangerous new McCarthyism" and asked the Senate Committee to retract it, saying the firm was "sponsored by partisan Democratic funders" and had itself been shown to have been "directly involved in election interference" in the 2017 US Senate election in Alabama.[96]

By July 31, 2018, Stein had spent slightly under $100,000 of the recount money on legal representation linked to the Senate probe into election interference.[97] In March 2019, Stein's spokesman David Cobb said she had "fully cooperated with the Senate inquiry."[98]

In October 2019, Hillary Clinton said that Russia's ongoing efforts to influence U.S. elections included a plot to support a third-party candidate in 2020, which could either be Jill Stein, whom she described as a "Russian asset," or Tulsi Gabbard.[99] A few days later, Clinton's comments were clarified to indicate that she thought that it was, in fact, Republicans who were behind the plot.[100] Stein denounced Clinton's comments on both herself and Gabbard, describing them as "slanderous".[101]