Hillary Clinton lambasted Bernie Sanders in a forthcoming documentary as a “career politician” who “nobody likes,” savaging her rival for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination less than two weeks before the 2020 Iowa caucuses.
The brutal remarks reopened longstanding party wounds, with multiple Obama White House alumni knocking Clinton, Sanders supporters galvanizing behind their candidate, and Clinton’s current and former aides rushing to her defense.
Although Sanders sought publicly to shrug off the swipes, the raw assessments from the previous Democratic nominee for president demonstrated how splintered the party remains over the most recent White House race — and the degree to which the 2020 primary has devolved into a bare-knuckled fight.
“He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him. He got nothing done,” Clinton said in the four-part series “Hillary,” which is set to debut in March and chronicle her life and most recent White House bid.
“He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it,” Clinton added of Sanders, in comments first reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
Addressing those criticisms in a Hollywood Reporter interview about the documentary — conducted earlier this month and published Tuesday — Clinton said her characterization of Sanders still holds true and demurred on whether she would throw her support behind the independent Vermont senator should he emerge as Democrats’ choice to challenge President Donald Trump in November.
“I’m not going to go there yet. We’re still in a very vigorous primary season,” Clinton said. “I will say, however, that it’s not only him, 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.”
Clinton argued that “it should be worrisome” that Sanders has “not only permitted” such a corrosive campaign culture but also “seems to really be very much supporting it.”
“I don’t think we want to go down that road again where you campaign by insult and attack and maybe you try to get some distance from it, but you either don’t know what your campaign and supporters are doing or you’re just giving them a wink and you want them to go after Kamala [Harris] or after Elizabeth [Warren],” Clinton said. “I think that that’s a pattern that people should take into account when they make their decisions.”
Sanders, who has been battling accusations of misogyny after Warren accused of him of saying that a woman could not win in 2020, sought to downplay the tensions with Clinton. “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,” he said in a statement.
Pressed further on the controversy by reporters in the Capitol, Sanders said Clinton is “entitled to her point of view” and cited polling showing him to be the “most popular U.S. senator in the country,” concluding: “So somebody out there must like me.”
