Hillary Clinton Says ‘Nobody Likes’ Bernie Sanders and Declines to Commit to Backing Him
Mrs. Clinton sharply criticized her former primary rival in a forthcoming documentary series, and stood by her comments in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.


In response to a question about whether she would support Bernie Sanders if he received the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton replied: “I’m not going to go there yet.”
In response to a question about whether she would support Bernie Sanders if he received the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton replied: “I’m not going to go there yet.”Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times
Matt Stevens
By Matt Stevens
Jan. 21, 2020
Updated 12:34 p.m. ET

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Hillary Clinton, who battled with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for months in a 2016 Democratic primary that sometimes turned contentious, ripped into her former campaign rival in a new documentary series and declined to say if she would endorse and campaign for him if he were to win the presidential nomination this time around.

“He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him,” she said in a forthcoming four-part series, set to have its premiere at Sundance and air on Hulu beginning March 6. “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.”

Asked in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, published on Tuesday, if that assessment still held, she said, “Yes, it does.”

And in response to a question about whether she would endorse and campaign for Mr. Sanders if he were to get the nomination, she said: “I’m not going to go there yet. We’re still in a very vigorous primary season.”

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The remarks, which Mrs. Clinton made this month, suggest that echoes of the combative campaign between her and Mr. Sanders still reverberate, with less than two weeks to go before the 2020 Iowa caucuses, as many Democrats voice renewed concerns about party unity.

Since having a heart attack this fall, Mr. Sanders has gained high-profile endorsements, shown increased strength in the polls and finds himself locked in a tight four-way race to win Iowa.

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But this month, a virtual nonaggression pact between Mr. Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the other leading progressive in the Democratic race, broke down, in part over a disagreement about whether Mr. Sanders told Ms. Warren that he did not believe a woman could be elected president. In recent days, both candidates have sought to de-escalate the tension, but the feud has been disconcerting to liberal activists and some of their supporters.

Asked to weigh in on the Warren-Sanders dispute in the Hollywood Reporter interview, Mrs. Clinton called it “part of a pattern,” noting that Mr. Sanders had criticized her as being “unqualified” during the 2016 primary.

And Mrs. Clinton, a former senator and secretary of state,  spoke of a “culture” around Mr. Sanders’s campaign she found troubling.

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“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 said. “And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture.”

“Not only permitted,” she added, but he “seems to really be very much supporting it.”

In a statement on Tuesday responding to Mrs. Clinton’s remarks, Mr. Sanders said: “My focus today is on a monumental moment in American history: the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Together, we are going to go forward and defeat the most dangerous president in American history.”

Responding on Twitter to criticism of Mrs. Clinton’s comments, Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, suggested that she had not entirely ruled out the possibility of backing Mr. Sanders were he to win the Democratic nomination.

“She said ‘yet,’” Mr. Merrill noted in reference to Mrs. Clinton’s comment, “I’m not going to go there yet.”

“She has repeatedly made clear that she isn’t committing to any candidate as the primary plays out, and more than anyone in the world she has shown time and again that she puts Democrats & our democracy above all else,” added Mr. Merrill, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Over a grueling primary battle through 2015 and 2016, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders clashed over policy differences over trade, the war in Iraq and other issues, and occasionally veered into more personal territory. On the campaign trail and in televised debates, Mr. Sanders attacked her ties to wealthy donors and Wall Street banks, including her six-figure speaking fees from Goldman Sachs. Mrs. Clinton pushed back hard, saying he was unable to cite evidence that she was unduly influenced by banks and portraying him as lacking in policy specifics and nuances.

Mr. Sanders won nearly 13 million votes in the 2016 primary presidential contests against Mrs. Clinton, and beat her in key states like Michigan, New Hampshire and Wisconsin. He also won more than 1,800 Democratic delegates. He initially refused to end his campaign in June 2016 after Mrs. Clinton secured the nomination, but eventually endorsed her as the convention neared. Still, many die-hard Sanders supporters remained critical of Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy through the general election, in online comments and in interviews, and Mr. Sanders did not unite them behind her.

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Months later, in the general election, Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College majority to Mr. Trump.

Mrs. Clinton also said that she had spoken with Ms. Warren, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and “practically everybody” who is seeking the Democratic nomination. But according to a transcript of the Hollywood Reporter interview, she nodded when the questioner suggested that Mr. Sanders was “not part of that.”

“I can’t say all of them,” she said of the candidates she had spoken with.