Hillary Clinton swipes at Bernie Sanders for ‘lasting damage’ in new book
In Hillary Clinton’s new book, What Happened, which examines her historic loss in the 2016 presidential election, Clinton claimed that Bernie’s unrealistic promises and attacks against her left “lasting damage” that paved the way for “(Donald) Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign.”
Clinton said that she and Sanders “agreed on so much,” so Sanders “had to resort to innuendo and impugning my character” in running against her.
“Some of his supporters, the so-called Bernie Bros, took to harassing my supporters online. It got ugly and more than a little sexist,” she wrote.
— Bernie Sanders says 2020 run is possible: ‘I am not taking it off the table’ —
“When I finally challenged Bernie during a debate to name a single time I changed a position or a vote because of a financial contribution, he couldn’t come up with anything,” Clinton wrote. “Nonetheless, his attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign.”
She also accused Sanders of disrupting her party, noting that he “isn’t a Democrat.”
“That’s not a smear, that’s what he says,” she wrote. “He didn’t get into the race to make sure a Democrat won the White House, he got in to disrupt the Democratic Party.”
She added, “I am proud to be a Democrat and I wish Bernie were, too.”
Clinton also lamented not being able to go after Sanders the way he went after her, recalling how “President Obama urged me to grit my teeth and lay off Bernie as much as I could. I felt like I was in a straitjacket.”
The book is set to be released on September 12.
