Hillary Clinton has returned to the political stage at the Sundance film festival and says she believes she could beat Donald Trump if she were to run again in November.
In a wide-ranging interview with Variety she was asked if she felt the urge to beat the president.
‘Yeah. I certainly feel the urge because I feel the 2016 election was a really odd time and an odd outcome,’ Clinton replied.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton believes she could win against President Donald Trump were she to run in November’s election. She is pictured during an interview with Variety
‘The more we learn, the more that seems to be the case. But I’m going to support the people who are running now and do everything I can to help elect the Democratic nominee.’
Although she has been plugging her film, Hillary, set to be released on Hulu in March, Clinton has managed to keep her focus on Trump, whose shock victory a little over three years ago cut short her seemingly unstoppable political ascent.
‘I just think we have to win. I don’t think we can afford another four years by the current incumbent,’ Clinton said. ‘I think that would be absolutely dangerous to our democracy, and I’ll do whatever I can to make sure the Democrats win this time,’ she continued.
She believes Trump’s ‘broken promises and the failed actions of this current administration’ should ensure the Democrats have a path to victory
‘We have to be better than the other side, because they are highly organized and incredibly well funded, and they have foreign help,’ she told reporters, vowing to work to defeat her Republican antagonist Donald Trump in November.
‘We should win, because I think people can see the broken promises and the failed actions of this current administration and so we should win, but we’re gonna have to overcome all of the obstacles they are throwing our way,’ she said.
After a period of relative quiet for one of America’s most formidable political actors, Clinton’s blistering remarks about Sanders announced she was back on the scene.
‘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 said.
She refused to take her comments back, but later said she would support whoever becomes the Democratic nominee. Sanders has since surged into first place in polling in Iowa, the first state to vote in the Democratic nominating process, on February 3.
Clinton remarked during an interview for documentary, Bernie Sanders had been in Congress for years but ‘nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done’.
Clinton has said she was not thinking about the 2020 Democratic primary or the effect on voters criticizing Sen. Bernie Sanders. She is pictured here on the 2016 campaign trail
In her interview with Variety, Clinton did not roll back on her comments about Sanders.
She says that she did not feel much support from Sanders after his own primary challenge failed in 2016 and encourages voters to examine the Vermont senator’s record.
Hillary Clinton unloaded on Bernie Sanders in new documentary due out in March
‘I think we did that interview about a year and a half ago. I wasn’t thinking about the election by any means. I’ve said I’m going to support the nominee. But I do think it’s important to look at somebody’s record and look at what they’ve gotten done and see whether you agree with that or not. I think that’s what every voter paying attention should do.
Clinton, who beat Trump in the popular vote, favors the abolition of the Electoral College. ‘The person who gets the most votes should win,’ she said. ‘The Electoral College is an anachronism that foils the rights of the majority of Americans to choose our leaders.’
Clinton also cited the role of social media platforms and, in particular, Facebook, in a potential repeat of Russian interference.
“The attacks on the fundamental right to vote and run our elections free from illegal, unconstitutional and certainly foreign interference is going to be even more sophisticated today than it was four years ago,” Clinton said.
But Clinton does think some things have changed in the last four years, especially for Trump.
Her interview indicates bitterness left from the 2016 campaign – the two are seen above on the campaign trail in 2015 – has not healed
“I think there’s a story now to be told. Before he was a blank slate. He was a guy that people saw on their TVs. As you know, he was a reality TV star,” Clinton said. “Now I think there´s a record that he´s going to have to be held accountable for.
Hillary, a documentary about the former Democratic standard bearer, was screened at the prestigious festival Saturday ahead of its world premier.
Clinton has said that ‘nothing was off limits’ with regards to the Hulu series and revealed she sat for around 35 hours of interviews for the series.
‘The point of the documentary is what a polarizing figure Secretary Clinton is,’ Nanette Burstein, who directed the film told AFP.
Hillary Clinton is pictured with Nanette Burstein, the director of Hillary – a look into the former Secretary of State’s life and her bid for the presidency in 2016
‘She is both admired and vilified, and the whole top line of it is to break that down. So I had no illusions that in the reaction to this piece, it would be the same thing,’ she said.
The Hillary project began as a behind-the-scenes look at the candidate’s 2016 campaign, relying on some 1,700 hours of footage taken by Burstein’s team.
But as it progressed, the documentary’s producers changed tack.
‘They came back and they said, ‘You know, there’s a bigger story here, and we want to tell your life, and we want to talk about the arc of women’s lives and politics,’ Clinton said.
‘I said, “Sure, let’s do it.”‘
‘I figured, let’s tell our story, because we’ve got to do more to get people to understand what’s going on in our country and the world, and if this can contribute to that, I’ll be very happy,’ she said.
The documentary examines how Clinton became at once one of the most admired and vilified women in the world. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are pictured
The four hour film is said to be a remarkably intimate portrait of a public woman revealing moments from never-before-seen 2016 campaign footage with biographical chapters of her life. She is pictured here together with daughter Chelsea Clinton