Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) brushed off criticism from his former political rival Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, insisting that he was focused on President Trump’s impeachment trial.
In a statement issued by his campaign, Sanders did not directly address the criticism from Clinton, who said in a new documentary that “nobody likes him” or “wants to work with him” in the Senate.
“My focus today is on a monumental moment in American history: the impeachment trial of Donald trump,” Sanders said. “Together, we are going to go forward and defeat the most dangerous president in American history.”
Sanders’s response came as Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate is set to get underway on Tuesday. It’s unclear how long the trial will last, but it is expected to keep Sanders and other senators running for the Democratic presidential nomination off the campaign trail, at least in the short term.
Clinton’s remarks, revealed on Monday, offered some of her most pointed criticism to date of Sanders, the self-described democratic socialist who challenged her for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016.
“He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him,” she said in an interview for a documentary set to premiere 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.”
Asked in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter whether the assessment of Sanders she gave in the documentary “still holds,” Clinton replied: “Yes, it does.”