‘Nobody likes’ Bernie Sanders, says Hilary Clinton
NEW YORK: Hillary Clinton launched a scathing attack on presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, her rival for the 2016 Democratic nomination, telling a documentary that ‘nobody likes him.’
The former US secretary of state also refused to say whether she would endorse and campaign for Sanders if he becomes the Democrats’ choice to take on President Donald Trump in November’s election.
Her comments on Tuesday drew the ire of Sanders’ supporters, who called on Clinton to support the candidate the party backs in their bid to remove Trump from the White
House.
“He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him,” Clinton says in a four-part series due to air on streaming site Hulu in March.
“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 adds.
Sanders, a leftist senator from Vermont, is among the leaders in the race for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.
He sits second in national polls behind centrist Joe Biden and ahead of Massachusetts senator in-law Gebran Bassil, was handed to respected diplomat Nassif Hitti.
The new cabinet is made up of unfamiliar figures, many of them academics and former advisers, but protesters were quick to argue that the absence of the biggest names in Lebanon’s widely reviled hereditary political elite was but a smokescreen.
“We want a new Lebanon, a Lebanon with no corruption,” Charbel Kahi, a 37-year-old farmer, told AFP as fellow protesters beat drums behind him.
“They are not taking the Lebanese people seriously with this government,” he said.
Diab admitted that “Lebanon is experiencing a difficult time in its history” and called for
Elizabeth Warren, two weeks before the first nomination vote in Iowa.
Sanders, 78, pushed 72-year-old Clinton to the wire four years ago in an acrimonious, months-long battle for the party’s nomination. stability but within minutes of his address protesters were out in the streets of several cities, including Tripoli, Sidon and Byblos.
Hilal Khashan, a professor at the American University of Beirut, argued that the idea of a genuinely technocratic government in Lebanon was ‘wishful thinking’.
Clinton won that race but lost to Trump. She has criticised Sanders and his supporters for not sufficiently backing her in the presidential vote.
Interviewed by The Hollywood Reporter about the documentary,
“Behind every candidate, there is a political party backing their nomination,” he said.
Paula Yacoubian, a former journalist and independent MP, scorned the new line-up as ‘patches on old clothes’.
“Hassan Diab did not keep his promise of forming a government of independent” experts, she said.
Diab, a 61-year-old engineering professor at the American University of Beirut and selfprofessed technocrat, had come under pressure on both the political and economic fronts.
Every day that passed without a cabinet had fuelled the anger of protesters and tested the patience of foreign donors warning that the quasi-bankrupt state could ill afford further delays. — AFP
Clinton stopped short of saying she would support Sanders if he won the nomination this year.
“I’m not going to go there yet. We’re still in a very vigorous primary season,” she said.
But in a tweet on Tuesday night, Clinton expanded on her position.
“I thought everyone wanted my authentic, unvarnished views! But to be serious, the number one priority for our country and world is retiring Trump, and, as I always have, I will do whatever I can to support our nominee,” she wrote.
Sanders played down the attack in the documentary, telling reporters that he was focused on Trump’s impeachment trial, which kicked off in earnest Tuesday.
“On a good day, my wife likes me, so let’s clear the air on that one,” he joked.
The Justice Democrats, a group close to Sanders, started a petition calling on Clinton to support whoever wins the nomination.
The former first lady and US senator also waded into a dispute between Warren and Sanders.
Warren has accused him of privately telling her in December 2018, as they contemplated White House runs, that he did not believe a woman could win a presidential election. — AFP