Former Green Party and independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader labeled 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton a “deep corporatist and a deep militarist” who has made peace with the nation’s power structure.

“I think Hillary is not the Hillary of when she was 30 years old. She made peace with the power structure and she is a deep corporatist and a deep militarist. One can almost forgive the corporatism. She moved to New York with Bill because that’s where the power is and Wall Street but her militarism is absolutely shocking,” he said during a discussion about his new book, Return to Sender, which focuses on unanswered letters Nader wrote to U.S. presidents about an array of issues.

Nader cited the war in Libya during President Obama’s first term to support his position on Clinton.

“She almost singlehandedly did the Libyan war. The Defense Department was against it, [Secretary Robert] Gates, and she persuaded the White House that it was an easy topple without knowing that in a tribal society with nothing to replace it you would have a civil war, sectarian killings spilling into Africa, weapons everywhere, Mali, central Africa and she’s being accused of Benghazi – the big thing is the huge amount of geography that has been destabilized because of the Libyan overthrow,” he added.

Nader, who ran for president in 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008, said Clinton “never met a weapons system she didn’t like” when she was a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

“This is the problem of women trying to overcompensate in becoming more aggressive and macho so they are not accused of being soft on the need to kill and war, right? Instead of taking the tradition of women of peace, and turning into a muscular waging of peace of conflict and prevention, she [Clinton] did the reverse, and [Madeline] Albright did the reverse and Anne Marie Slaughter did the reverse and some of Obama’s advisers did the reverse,” he said. “We have to be transcendent on this. We have to really go right to the core of what people are standing for, fighting for and fighting against.”



Nader, a consumer advocate and political activist, said it is absurd that presidential candidates have to shape their primary campaigns around Iowa and New Hampshire.

“I mean, you start with conservative states. What if they started with Massachusetts and California, for example? It would be different and Iowa is just a caucus. It’s how many buses you can bring in and how good the food is,” he said.

Nader recalled telling a famous publisher that more political satire is needed in America and the publisher replied, “The big problem is, how do you satire satire?”

“So we really have to get very serious. It’s like the country is being twirled around a tiny pivot by a few self-selected politicians who make their peace with the power structure, the 1 percent,” he said.