Hillary Clinton said Tuesday that she had no plans to endorse any Democratic presidential candidate as the party seeks to find its nominee.
“I am not planning to endorse,” Clinton told NPR’s Audie Cornish. “I am going to say the same thing I’ve been saying from the beginning of this vigorous primary contest: I hope the voters will pick the person that is most able to beat Donald Trump in the Electoral College. At the end of the day, that is all that matters.”
Clinton, a former secretary of state and the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee, made her comments shortly before polls began to close on Super Tuesday. The day showed renewed vigor for former Vice President Joe Biden’s bid to unseat President Donald Trump, particularly after he garnered several high-profile endorsements on Monday. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Clinton’s rival for the Democratic nomination in 2016, also fared well in some states.
Clinton said she believed there was still “great hunger in our country for change,” and rejected assertions that the Democratic nomination was rigged against progressive lawmakers like Sanders.
“You know, I think people who get things done in politics should be really admired,” Clinton told Cornish. “If the establishment means you put your head down, you get to work, you figure out how you’re going to pay for things, you build a coalition, you actually make change, then I think that’s a misnomer.”
Clinton has largely stayed out of the fray as the Democratic race heats up, although she has taken aim at Sanders while discussing an upcoming docu-series about her political career.
In footage set to air later this week, Clinton says of Sanders: “Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done.” When asked in January if her assessment still stood, she simply replied: “Yes, it does.”
Clinton later said she would ultimately “do whatever I can to support our nominee,” even if it were the Vermont senator.
“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 on Twitter after joking that she thought “everyone wanted my authentic, unvarnished views.”
Politico reported last week that the former secretary of state plans to launch her own podcast sometime in late spring, which could give her a powerful megaphone as the primary season wraps up.
Clinton told NPR this week that despite her loss in 2016 and her decision not to run in 2020, she remains “more energized and more ready to take on what I consider to be the forces that are trying to tear this country apart.”
“I am sick of divisiveness and destructiveness in our politics,” Clinton said. “I am sick of getting nothing done.”