January 21, 2020

Clinton Blasts Sanders, Refuses to Say Whether She’d Endorse Him Over Trump

What happened to “vote for anybody to get rid of Donald Trump?”

Aaron Chown/ZUMA

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Hillary Clinton, nearly four years after a bitter race for the 2020 Democratic nomination, blasted her former primary opponent Bernie Sanders, claiming in a new interview that “nobody likes” him and that Sanders has achieved nothing during his time as a senator from Vermont. 

“Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done,” Clinton told the Hollywood Reporter as a part of the upcoming Hulu documentary on the former secretary of state. “He was a career politician. It’s all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.”

Clinton also declined to say whether she would endorse or campaign for Sanders, a leading contender in the current 2020 primary race, if he were to clinch the Democratic nomination to run against President Donald Trump. “I’m not going to go there yet,” she said.

The stinging remarks were roundly condemned on the left, even by Clinton supporters, many of whom expressed confusion as to why she’d seek to relitigate the 2016 primary and potentially sow more divisions ahead of the fast-approaching Iowa caucus. 

Clinton previously defended Joe Biden against allegations that he interacted inappropriately with women throughout his political career.  “This man who’s there in the Oval Office right now poses a clear and present danger to the future of the United States,” Clinton told People in September. “So get over it.”

“Vote for anybody to get rid of Donald Trump,” she added. It appears, however, that this exhortation might exclude her former primary opponent.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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