Hillary Clinton says ‘nobody likes’ Bernie Sanders and claims he ‘got nothing done’
In a four-part documentary series on the former presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton says “nobody likes” Bernie Sanders and claims he “got nothing done”, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The former secretary of state criticises Mr Sanders as a “career politician”.
She said: “It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”
The upcoming Hulu series Hillary, which the publication describes as a largely flattering portrait of Ms Clinton, does not include a response from Mr Sanders, who was not asked to participate. The director explained that she “didn’t want to re-litigate 2016 ... as much as just be able to show Hillary in this unobtrusive way”.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Ms Clinton says she isn’t going to make an endorsement in the 2020 Democratic primary just yet, and declined to say whether she’ll endorse Mr Sanders if he gets the nomination.
She blamed the “culture around him” as well as his leadership team and “Bernie Bros” who she claims have made “relentless attacks” on his competitors, “particularly the women”, and suggested he endorses those attacks.
Mr Sanders was among the 2016 Democratic primary candidates but later endorsed Ms Clinton following her selection as the Democratic nominee. He also campaigned for her election.
If he loses the nomination in 2020, he also has pledged to endorse the Democratic nominee.
On the recent media narrative surrounding his comments about whether a woman could win the presidency, Ms Clinton said his defence amounted to a “very personal attack” on Elizabeth Warren, who claimed that Mr Sanders said a woman couldn’t win the election during a meeting in 2018. Mr Sanders has unequivocally denied the claims, pointing to Hillary Clinton’s popular vote win in 2016, along with his history of supporting women candidates.
Ms Clinton said: “It’s part of a pattern. If it were a one-off, you might say, ‘OK, fine.’ But he said I was unqualified. I had a lot more experience than he did, and got a lot more done than he had, but that was his attack on me. I just think people need to pay attention because we want, hopefully, to elect a president who’s going to try to bring us together, and not either turn a blind eye, or actually reward the kind of insulting, attacking, demeaning, degrading behaviour that we’ve seen from this current administration.”
In 2016, Mr Sanders cited a headline in The Washington Post that said the Clinton campaign “questions whether Sanders is qualified to be president” while another headline said Ms Clinton’s strategy was to “defeat Sanders, unify party”, Mr Sanders said at the time.
He responded, saying “that was what was thrown at me” as he launched a defence of his qualifications. He said: ”They’re going to question my qualifications, well, I’m going to question theirs.”
During a debate, he said, “My response is, if you want to question my qualifications, then maybe the American people might wonder about your qualifications, Madame Secretary” before he listed her support for the Iraq War and millionaire-donor fundraising while trying to mount a defence of his issue-oriented campaign.
Following publication of The Hollywood Reporter interview, her former strategist Peter Daou said he has avoided attacking Ms Clinton as he embraced progressive campaigns, “but this broadside against Bernie is profoundly wrong. Especially since it echoes the erasure of his diverse coalition by pushing the ‘bro’ narrative.”
He said Ms Clinton is among other politicians in the “core of the Democratic establishment that has failed to halt the march of right-wing extremism”.
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