Former Secretary of State and 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton endorsed presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden for president, coming days after former President Barack Obama did the same.
“I am thrilled to be part of your campaign—to not only endorse you but to help highlight a lot of the issues that are at stake,” she said during a virtual town hall on the impact of COVID-19 on women.
Clinton for months said that she would back the eventual Democratic nominee. The endorsement may give a boost to Biden, who has struggled to stay relevant amid the pandemic, but it will also give President Donald Trump and Republicans a new angle to attack.
“There is no greater concentration of Democrat establishment than Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton together,” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale wrote in a statement on Tuesday. “President Trump beat her once and now he’ll beat her chosen candidate.”
It comes days after Obama, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) all endorsed Biden earlier this month. Sanders bowed out of the race earlier in April before endorsing Biden, after he took losses in several key states, including most of the Super Tuesday nominating contests.
Clinton, meanwhile, has made few comments on candidates during the Democratic presidential primary fight, although she offered critical words against Sanders, whom she had faced in 2016 during the primary. She also made a veiled critical comment about Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), who filed a lawsuit against her in January.
“I’m just watching and hoping that we nominate whoever is the strongest candidate to take out the current incumbent,” Clinton also told an ABC News interviewer in March. “That’s the only thing that really matters at the end of the day.”
During Super Tuesday, she praised Biden, 77, and said that “he has the experience” to be president, while criticizing Sanders.
“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 documentary months before that. “He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”
When she was asked about those comments in early March, Clinton said “that was my authentic opinion then” adding: “It’s my authentic opinion now.”
Four years ago, Biden had considered running against Clinton and later said that the former first lady failed to reach many middle-class voters. Clinton also admitted that she wanted to run against Biden in 2019.
Other top Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, former Vice President Al Gore, and Gov. Jay Inslee of Washington have recently thrown their weight behind Biden in recent days.
Clinton made the comments during a live-streamed meeting with Biden. The former vice president has been relegated to holding online events after announcing that he would suspend holding in-person rallies amid the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) pandemic.
Biden has also been dogged by an allegation from a former staffer, Tara Reade, who claimed then-Sen. Biden sexually assaulted her in the early 1990s. The former vice president has remained silent on the matter, and no one in the media has asked him a direct question about her, although his campaign has categorically denied Reade’s claims.
Reade’s claims gained more weight after a “Larry King Live” clip from 1993 resurfaced, appearing to include Reade’s mother alluding to problems that her daughter faced while she worked for Biden.
“What is clear about this claim: it is untrue. This absolutely did not happen,” a campaign spokesperson told news outlets earlier this month.
