The wounds of the 2016 Democratic primary have not healed for Hillary Clinton.
The former Democratic presidential nominee was highly critical of her one-time rival Bernie Sanders in an interview published Tuesday and wouldn’t say whether she would publicly back him if he wins the 2020 primary.
“I’m not going to go there yet,” she told the Hollywood Reporter while discussing a new documentary about her.
In the four-part series, which premieres in March on Hulu, the former secretary of state argued that “nobody likes” the Vermont senator.
“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. He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it,” she said.
Clinton said she still stands behind that assessment and accused Sanders of fostering an environment that breeds sexism.
[Related: Warren describes private meeting with Sanders: ‘I thought a woman could win; he disagreed’]
“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. And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture — not only permitted, [he] seems to really be very much supporting it,” she said.
“And 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]. I think that that’s a pattern that people should take into account when they make their decisions,” she added.
Clinton has previously accused Sanders of hurting her presidential candidacy by delaying his endorsement of her in 2016. Sanders, 78, endorsed Clinton, 72, two weeks before the Democratic convention.
“I’m sorry that Hillary Clinton is rerunning 2016,” Sanders said in December. “I could take out a letter from Hillary Clinton saying, ‘Thank you, Bernie, for working so hard to try to make me the President of the United States.'”
