Jill Stein is still somehow making presidential election news these days, not so much for having run, but because all of the Russian “meddling” stories include footnotes saying the aforementioned meddlers were trying to drive votes her way as well. She’s not having any of that, in addition to continuing to deny that her dinner with Vladimir Putin was any sort of big deal. She talked to Alex Witt on MSNBC this week and was asked about the Russians once again. Her take on the matter? Lots of people were “meddling” in 2016, including the media and the Democrats. (Mediaite)

Days after the Russian indictments were handed down, Jill Stein appeared on MSNBC today to downplay Russian interference by pointing to American interference in the election.

She told Alex Witt the idea there was this big Russian attempt to back her campaign to hurt Hillary Clinton is absurd, saying, “This doesn’t pass the laugh test.”

She continued on to say there was “other kinds of interference,” like all the airtime the media gave Trump in 2016:

Let’s go to the video for the full effect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBzQIGn9HkE

The big takeaway quote came a little later in the interview. Stein began to get specific when she said, “Yes, there was Russian interference, but remember, there was very compelling interference going on by way of media, by way of the DNC––did the DNC not rig the primary?”

I wasn’t terribly impressed with Stein’s presidential campaign (to say the least) and she drifts off into some rather odd territory during this interview. But at the same time, she’s making a similar point to one I’ve been bringing up over the course of the entire Russia, Russia, Russia investigation. How, exactly, are we defining “meddling” in this conversation? You can pour through our entire body of federal codes and I don’t think you’re going to run across very many “anti-meddling laws.”

Of course, Stein goes way overboard when she talks about the Democrats engaging in meddling for the most part. We already have a word for that in America and it’s called “campaigning.” Now, if you’re talking about the way the Democrats rigged the primary in Hillary Clinton’s favor, sure. You can call it meddling if you like, but for the vast majority of their shenanigans, they were actually following the rules they established for themselves. The only problem there was that the meddling was baked into the cake before it began.

But what of the media when they demonstrate massive bias in “reporting” the news on the major candidates? (As opposed to clearly marked editorials they run.) Pretending that they don’t use loaded terms and speak the language of the liberal tribe is a lost cause. So are they “meddling” in the election? Or is it okay to meddle as long as it’s someone in the United States doing it?

But the foreign press weighs in all the time, particularly in Great Britain. And if you search for translated pages, the same happens in France, Germany and pretty much everywhere else. So does Stein have a point here? Is it only meddling if the Russians do it? It may be more subtle to do it on Facebook using a fake name so people think you’re an American, but you’re still really just talking about Facebook posts on the subject of politics, many of which are already questionable in accuracy if not blatantly false.

It’s just something to ponder, anyway. Jill Stein is an imperfect messenger to be sure, but she might have a point here, at least partially.