The presumptive nominees of both the Republican Party and the Green Party agree on something— Bernie Sanders should continue his attempt to start a political revolution through the general election.
Green Party leader Jill Stein said during an appearance on Democracy Now that Hillary Clinton may be worse than Trump and urged Sanders to join her for a third party run.
"Trump says very scary things—deporting immigrants, massive militarism and ignoring the climate," said Stein. "Hillary, unfortunately, has a track record for doing all of those things."
"We see these draconian things that Donald Trump is talking about, we actually see Hillary Clinton doing," said Stein.
Stein, who ran for president in 2012 on the Green Party ticket, said that the Democratic Party "very steeply tilted the playing field" in favor of Clinton and that he should not take it lying down.
"The Democratic machine has very steeply tilted the playing field, from the beginning, by limiting the debates, limiting the exposure of Bernie Sanders," said Stein. She also complained that independent voters were silenced in California and mentioned the 100,000 voters that disappeared from the rolls in Brooklyn.
Stein said that this is what the Democratic Party has been doing for decades.
"This is what the Democratic Party has done for decades—many decades, in fact," said Stein. "Over the years, the party has allowed principled candidates to be seen and heard, but has, at the end of the day, sabotaged them in one way or the other, often through fear campaigns and smear campaigns, in the same way that Bernie is being called a spoiler now and has been for some weeks."
Stein said that she saw Sanders' White House meeting with President Obama as a "mistake," calling it "an abandonment of the movement that has been built."
Sanders has said he remains committed to his promise that he would not run outside of the party, but Stein remains hopeful that the movement he created may have the ability to continue on without him.
"My hope, as Senator Sanders himself said, is that this is a movement, it’s not a man," said Stein. "My hope is that the movement will continue."
Stein said she would work to change the Green Party's nomination rules if Sanders changes his mind after the "disturbing experiences" of running against Clinton.
"What I’m saying is that if Senator Sanders made the case that now he understood, after the very, you know, disturbing experiences of the last many months and the way that he’s been mistreated and beaten up by the party, perhaps he has a different view of the potential to create revolution inside of a counterrevolutionary party," said Stein. "Maybe he has come to see the necessity for independent third parties to actually move this movement forward."
Trump has consistently stated his belief that Sanders should run an independent campaign because of how unfairly he has been treated by the Democratic Party.