the c-span radio app makes it easy to follow the 2016 election wherever you are. it is free to download. get up-to-the-minute schedule information for c-span radio and c-span television plus podcast times. stay up-to-date on all the election coverage. radio app means you always have c-span on the go. >> newsmakers is next with green party presidential candidate jill stein. after that, we will show you jill stein speaking at the green party national convention this weekend. that is followed by former lieutenant governor betsy mccoy mpaign pivots toward the general election. to date, our conversation with civil war historian chintz robertson on "q&a."

susan: dr. jill stein is on your screen. she has joined as from houston, where the green party is meeting this weekend. she will once again be their standard bearer for the presidency. joining us is bob cusack of "the hill" and olivier knox of yahoo! news, cheif washington correspondent. susan: olivier, you're up first. olivier: i have a question for you about the presidential debates. a case has been dismissed that you brought to be part of the debates. how severe of a blow is that to your campaign? jill stein: i am not surprised to hear that. we assumed that would be the outcome. we do have a second case. i am not holding my breath that we are going to get a favorable decision in a court of law. i think we've already won in the court of public opinion.

the public is not happy with the two candidates from the democratic and republican parties. they are the most disliked throughout history. the public is clamoring for more voices and more choices. i think the pressure will continue to grow. we are coming up in the polls. today's poll says we are at 6%. we tripled our numbers in the course of a couple of weeks. we hope to do that again and get to the 15%. i think the american public has a right to vote. they have a right to know who they can vote for. i encourage people to go to our website. you can join our campaign for open debates. the american people deserve in this time of great discontent with our rigged political system, the people deserve a full and fair debate.

bob: you try to get bernie sanders to join your movement. he were very critical of hillary clinton in the wake of the leaked e-mails from the democratic national committee. did you ever talk to bernie sanders? jill stein: we are ready to put all options on the table. the delegates did decide their candidate. if he saw the green light after having been thrown under the bus by the democratic party. if he came to understand why we need a different politics that is not controlled either big banks and the fossil fuel giants and the war profiteers. we're the only party that is not poisoned by that corporate money.

if he came to understand why he needed the revolutionary product party to support a revolutionary campaign, i was ready to go to bat for him. he did not respond. that was no surprise. the green party has been trying to open a conversation with him for many years. he has his own perspective. it is not ours. we remain open it to what happens in a shifting political climate. it's not like he can enter into the nominating process.

that is over and done with. i see a lot of opportunity for collaborating down the line. his movement is not sitting like happy campers with the campaign that is hillary clinton's campaign that represents the opposite of what they were working for with bernie sanders. that is an economy that works for everyone. it is not driven a buys a big banks and the billionaires. that remains a critical issue for his supporters that don't want to see their hard work go down the drain. the campaigns are running in the big dough of the insurance companies and all the rest. that movement is alive at our

convention where many of the former spokespeople for the sanders campaign are now continuing that work bringing that movement into our party to support it, not just through november but until we prevail. olivier: you have mentioned ernie repeatedly. he has clearly cast his lot in with hillary clinton. he said the most important goal is to defeat donald trump. i have talked to democrats who

support hillary and bernie. a vote for you amounts to a vote for making america great again. how do you respond to that? jill stein: the numbers show that even hillary's supporters for the most part don't actually support hillary. they are just afraid of donald trump. the same is true of donald trump's supporters. the majority actually really object to hillary clinton. at the same time it, majority voters are calling for an independent candidate that represents everyday people. before we call the election it,

we ought to have a full and fair debate. we should allow voters to actually meet. there are urgent needs for a real debate and more choices. let me emphasize what ernie said. the only answer to donald trump is a true progressive agenda that addresses the economic misery that gives rise to this right-wing extremism it -- extremism. it's a surge in america like it is in europe. this is a very much a response to the policies of neoliberalism, the policies of austerity. these are policies that are great for bankers and billionaires, but terrible for regular people. hillary clinton has been part of the problem. it's the policies that hillary supported that have driven this crisis to great extremes. that includes nafta, which bill clinton signed. it sends our jobs offshore and puts downward pressure on wages. they have been supporting the transpacific partnership. hillary has waffled a little bit. even her close political allies say she will be back when the election is over. we saw the dnc refused to repeat

ea the transpacific partnership. the problems that have created the rise of donald trump will be continued high hillary clinton. we mention wall street deregulation that led the way to the crash. this is very much what the clinton agenda has been about. hillary continues to be sponsored by the big bankers. she still won't share with the public. it's very clear that she may be talking the talk. she is not walking the walk. the real solution is to stand up with the progressive policies that i provide. olivier: bernie sanders suggested hillary clinton is not fit to be president. is she fit to be commander-in-chief? jill stein: according to the prevailing paradigm, she is celebrated. she is a representative of that prevailing paradigm. in my opinion, this is not what the american people need.

she has represented a war. hillary led the way into libya. it carries on. we have a new bombing campaign over libyan out. she is a failed extreme militarism. she represents the policy of the bankers and, having served on the board of walmart, she represents an economy that is good or the ceos, but is very hard and working people and women. i would say this traditional paradigm of neoliberalism is not fit. it is not fit for the american people.

olivier: what is your position on mandatory vaccines for children? jill stein: it's clear vaccines are a critical part of our public health infrastructure and have made a major contribution to public health. the point that i have been making is that all medications need proper regulation. when you have an fda that is part of the revolving door from the pharmaceutical industry and when you have a political environment where $700 million was contributed between 2009 in 2011, we need to restore the integrity and the public trust in our regulatory apparatus. that's not rocket science. you only have to look at the fda regulations.

there were serious cases of heart disease that developed while the fda was suppressing information they had about its side effects. they were preventing physicians from understanding and the public from knowing. we need to keep these things from happening. olivier: there is a video in which you appear to say that internet access in schools is having a bad health effect on children's brains. you described them as guinea pigs. it's a fairly remarkable statement. there is no evidence that wi-fi has adverse health effects. what were you trying to say? what is your position today on that?

jill stein: maybe you did not see the studies that were just released by the national institutes of health. they made known the results of their most detailed and accurate and scientifically rigorous study that raises questions. throughout europe, several countries, many countries have seen fit to protect vulnerable people from that sort of radiation. i am not saying that the science is done on this. the science has just begun. i support a precautionary principle, having studied at great detail i would recommend the book that i wrote on this.

called "in harm's way: toxic threats to child development." it was published in the early 2000's. we actually reviewed the history of regulation. our system catches up after the fact. lead is a classic example. why do we have the disasters now in flint, michigan. we have lead everywhere. the public was a guinea pig for lead. it took decades after it was well understood that high-dose lead exposure was devastating. we did not have regulations in place. we have paint in our homes and in our gasoline. we did not regulate lead until about a century after it was known that it was a great hazard. had we had a more precautionary

approach, if it protected people instead of profits, we would be a much healthier place today. susan: we are at the 10 minute mark. bob: the top tax rate is 40%. in 1981 it was 70%. what should be the top tax rate if you were president? jill stein: i think we need to ask our wealthiest corporations and individuals to pay their fair share. they have in making out like bandits. the wealth of the nation has shifted into very few hands. in the words of louis brandeis, we have a choice between an

democracy or vast concentrations of wealth. we have an economy and the contribution of the richest. i think we need a graduated income tax so that these superrich are paying their fair share. that should be in the range of 70% on income tax. bob: how would you define the superrich? how much do people make as far as individual or married? jill stein: i don't have that number for you offhand. when people are making in the millions and billions of dollars, they need to be contributing at a much higher level than they are. i am not talking about making $300,000. i'm talking about the very highest level of income where people are making millions or billions of dollars. they need to be taking in their fair share.

olivier: you mentioned the new military campaign in libya. we are in a seven military campaigns. in your administration, what would the war on terrorism look like? where would you be involved? where would you not be involved. where would you commit people to conflict? jill stein: according to a recent harvard study, iraq and afghanistan have cost us $6 trillion when you include the health-care costs cost of caring for our veterans. that $6 trillion comes out to $75,000 per american household. that is absolutely staggering. $6 trillion on its own is an incredible amount of money. what do we have to show for it? failed states. mass refugee migrations that are tearing apart europe and the middle east. we have worse terror threats. every threat we have been

fighting is bigger and stronger because of this fight. that includes the taliban, al qaeda. the new crisis of isis came out of the disaster in iraq and libya. this is a catastrophically failed policy. you cannot bomb terrorists out of existence. there are things we can do that would pull the rug out from under them. let's remember where this terrorist enterprise began. this was part of a strategy between the saudis and the united states in afghanistan to strengthen the mujahedin and make them a cause very much in very much in conjunction with the saudi religious and interpretation.

the saudis established their schools for terrorists in training. this has been a catastrophic policy. it was intended to cause the problems with the soviet union in afghanistan. it has backfired tremendously. the cia and our allies have continued to support this movement. they've continue to fund it and arm it. we cannot simultaneously fight terrorism while we or our allies are funding the army and training them. we call for a weapons embargo. we are providing the majority of arms to the region. we call for a weapons embargo. we call for a freeze on the bank accounts of those countries they continue to fund terrorism.

hillary clinton herself in a leaked series of state department memos when she was secretary of state identified the saudis as the major source of funding for sunni jihadist terrorism around the world. we got it started. we can put it to a stop. those of the first two things we would do. we would also work with turkey. they have been persuaded to close their order to the flow of refugees. they can be persuaded to close their border to the flow of jihadi militias. those are the critical first steps. i would say more broadly we need a foreign policy that is based not on military and economic domination and securing oil or other fossil fuel resources. we did a foreign policy based on international law and human rights in diplomacy.

bob: you indirectly, or directly, criticized barack obama. i want you to give him a grade. does he deserve an a as president? is he a c? is he an f? jill stein: according to the conventional view, he has been a great president. in my view, the climate crisis is far worse today thanks to all of the above. we massively increased fossil fuels. i think the climate policy has been a disaster. i think the foreign policy has been a continuation of george bush. we have outrageous drone wars. i think on nuclear weapons the

policies of the obama administration have continued the policies of his predecessors. we have a new nuclear arms race which puts us at a great peril. this is to the is. i don't want to criticize the man. i think it is the wrong politics for the 21st century and this crisis we are facing, which is a pervasive crisis. we need a new way forward. the american people are clamoring for a new way forward that puts people over profit. this is what we get with that political system. this is why we need system change and not just small change around the margins.

susan: we have three minutes left. olivier: you want to end this cycle above the 5% threshold. where is the green party going to win in november? are there congressional battles where you think you have a good shot? are ther estates where you think you might come in third or win? where are you going to do best? jill stein: let me just say that all bets are off. the word is only beginning to break through. our campaign has only begun to reach mainstream media. donald trump had $2 billion worth of free mainstream media. we are only beginning to enter into the conversation at a time when people are clamoring for the systemic change that we

represent. just to look at young people who are locked in student debt, they do not have a future. as they hear that we will cancel student debt, we bailed out the bankers to the tune of trillions of dollars. we can do that for the victims of those on wall street. we are at 6% in this poll. how did we get there without media coverage? this is basically word-of-mouth. i would say hold onto your hats and see where this conversation goes. if we can double our numbers and a little bit more, we will be in the debates. all bets are off about what the american people are going to do.

this is the perfect storm for a voter revolt did we are looking at what kind of future we want to have. we are looking at the nuclear arms race. we are at a unique moment. susan: there are realities of the ballot process. you are in fewer than half the states. what will that really look like? how many states to anticipate being on the ballot? jill stein: between 48 and 50. those numbers are going up rapidly. we also have ongoing cases. we hope to be on the ballot for every voter. it's not realistic to keep shooting ourselves in the foot with the two parties that are

throwing us under the bus. we need to get ahead for the down ballot races. we need an america and a world that works for all of us. susan: jill stein is joining us from houston. thank you for your time. jill stein: thank you so much. great talking. susan: by her admission, this is a nonconventional election year. where does the green party fit in? olivier: i don't think we know where they fit in. we're still looking at the libertarian numbers and independent voters. i don't think we know. i think she is not wrong to say all bets are off. she has a very long climb to achieve success as she defined. doubling their numbers to get in the debates, good luck.

bob: it's going to be tough. this is the year that she is getting more attention. she is media savvy. she has a message. she doesn't hold back in criticizing the conventional candidates. she needs to get to 15% to get in the debates. that is highly unlikely. she is in single digits now. whether she gets in the debates is a big thing. it is a catch-22. without a doubt, she was criticizing the media, the media has been focused on these third-party candidates more so

than ever because donald trump and hillary clinton are unpopular. susan: she is polling in double digits with younger voters. olivier: even if it doesn't impact the election this year, people are looking at 2020 and beyond. one of the amazing legacies of the bernie candidacy, people are looking at changing demographics. i think those things are going to be important. she is playing a difficult hand. she is getting attention in a year in which people are rejecting institutions and the establishment. maybe not in the number she needs to really pull this off. susan: you asked a number of questions about bernie sanders. can you explain to people watching this when there seemed to be alignment in his positions and the green positions? bob: she was putting up press releases calling on bernie sanders to join the movement.

as she said, he did not answer them. there were supporters who might be her running mate. bernie sanders said that he was going to help the nominee. she needs to appeal to the bernie sanders supporters. that is clearly her strategy. even though she did not get bernie sanders, she is saying things that went overwhelmingly for bernie sanders. she needs to get those voters fired up her candidacy. i think she has a message that if you care about climate change, you listen to what she has to say. susan: i am still curious about senator sanders' strategy going forward. olivier: his campaign manager said it when he goes back to the

senate he will be an independent again. bob: he showed the true potential of an online fundraising strategy. he showed the progressive message. he was vastly different from the other second-place tenets. there is the head and the heart. the question for me is how the question for me is how different is he? is he a vessel for these aspirations? is he truly the candidate with the message? people completely underestimate bernie sanders as a political strategist. i know he looks like a tenured he knows where his audience is in a way that very few other politicians do.