Jill Stein is firing back at John Oliver after the “Last Week Tonight” host criticized Stein’s plan to cancel student loan debt.
“Coming from someone who made a stunt of buying and canceling medical debt on his show, and who claims to want alternatives to the failed two-party system, this disingenuous attack on the idea of cancelling student debt is both puzzling and hypocritical,” Stein’s campaign said in a statement.
In the segment, Oliver said that Steins’s plan involved the use of a process called quantitative easing, in which more money is printed and put into circulation.
“When Oliver’s fact-checkers asked if canceling student debt via quantitative easing was the campaign’s current position, we replied that we are considering a range of options in consultation with our economic advisers,” the statement reads. “Regardless, Oliver singled out canceling student debt via the Federal Reserve, implying both that this was our only option and that it would be technically impossible.”
“The same tired, misleading attack lines were trotted out, and Oliver chose to misrepresent our campaign on the lone substantive issue that he addressed: our plan to cancel student debt,” the campaign’s statement concluded.
Gary Johnson, the Libertarian candidate who was also the subject of Oliver’s scrutiny, has yet to respond to the criticisms of his campaign made by Oliver.
