Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that she will support the Democratic nominee for president even if it is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
She was asked about her 2016 primary rival at the Berlinale film festival where she is promoting a new movie about her, “Hillary.” In January, a clip surfaced of the former first lady criticizing Sanders for being hard to work with and accomplishing little while in Congress.
“I’m going to wait and see who we nominate,” Clinton told reporters, according to The Hill. “I will support the nominee, and it won’t surprise you to hear me say that I think it’s imperative that we retire the incumbent.”
Clinton last month angered some of Sanders’ supporters after she claimed during a Hulu special that “nobody likes” the self-described democratic socialist before saying that as a senator, he “got nothing done.” The two were engaged in a hard-fought primary four years ago.
“He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it,” Clinton also said.
So far, Sanders has emerged as the Democratic front-runner after taking home victories in Nevada and New Hampshire, raising concerns among the Democratic establishment and fellow 2020 candidates.
In the past, Clinton has said that she would support whoever the nominee is but that was before Sanders’ campaign started to pick up steam.
“I’ve said I’m going to support the nominee,” Clinton told Variety at the time. “But I do think it’s important to look at somebody’s record and look at what they’ve gotten done and see whether you agree with that or not. I think that’s what every voter paying attention should do.”
When she was asked in the Variety interview about her “nobody likes him” comments, Clinton remarked that they were made more than a year ago.
“I think we did that interview about a year-and-a-half ago. I wasn’t thinking about the election by any means,” she said.
Sanders last month didn’t directly address Clinton’s comments but turned his focus on President Donald Trump.
“I’m sorry for what Secretary Clinton had to say. I know she said that nobody likes me, right. I mean, this is not the kind of rhetoric that we need right now when we are trying to bring the Democratic Party together to defeat the most dangerous president in American history,” he told CBS News.
The longtime senator added that he hadn’t spoken with Clinton for “quite a while.”
