ZCZC
BFF-24
US-POLITICS-VOTE-CLINTON-SANDERS,2NDLEAD
Hillary Clinton says ‘nobody likes’ Bernie Sanders
NEW YORK, Jan 22, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Hillary Clinton launched a scathing
attack on presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, her rival for the 2016
Democratic nomination, telling a documentary that “nobody likes him.”
The former US secretary of state also refused to say whether she would
endorse and campaign for Sanders if he becomes the Democrats’ choice to take
on President Donald Trump in November’s election.
Her comments on Tuesday drew the ire of Sanders’ supporters, who called on
Clinton to support the candidate the party backs in their bid to remove Trump
from the White House.
“He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him,” Clinton
says in a four-part series due to air on streaming site Hulu in March.
“Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He
was a career politician.
“It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it,”
she adds.
Sanders, a leftist senator from Vermont, is among the leaders in the race
for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
He sits second in national polls behind centrist Joe Biden and ahead of
Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, two weeks before the first nomination
vote in Iowa.
Sanders, 78, pushed 72-year-old Clinton to the wire four years ago in an
acrimonious, months-long battle for the party’s nomination. Clinton won that
race but lost to Trump.
She has criticized Sanders and his supporters for not sufficiently backing
her in the presidential vote.
Interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter about the documentary, Clinton
stopped short of saying she would support Sanders if he won the nomination
this year.
“I’m not going to go there yet. We’re still in a very vigorous primary
season,” she said.
But in a tweet on Tuesday night, Clinton expanded on her position.
“I thought everyone wanted my authentic, unvarnished views! But to be
serious, the number one priority for our country and world is retiring Trump,
and, as I always have, I will do whatever I can to support our nominee,” she
wrote.
– Warren dispute –
Sanders played down the attack in the documentary, telling reporters that
he was focused on Trump’s impeachment trial, which kicked off in earnest
Tuesday.
“On a good day, my wife likes me, so let’s clear the air on that one,” he
joked.
The Justice Democrats, a group close to Sanders, started a petition
calling on Clinton to support whoever wins the nomination.
The former first lady and US senator also waded into a dispute between
Warren and Sanders.
Warren has accused him of privately telling her in December 2018, as they
contemplated White House runs, that he did not believe a woman could win a
presidential election.
Sanders denies the claim but Clinton said the comment was “part of a
pattern.”
“If it were a one-off, you might say, ‘OK, fine.’ But he said I was
unqualified,” she recalled.
“It’s the culture around him. It’s his leadership team. It’s his prominent
supporters. It’s his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots
of his competitors, particularly the women,” she added.
Sanders apologized to Biden on Monday after one of his supporters, Zephyr
Teachout, wrote an opinion article in The Guardian accusing the former vice-
president of having “a big corruption problem.”
BSS/AFP/RY/1405