Hillary Clinton in a new interview questions whether presidential rival Bernie Sanders is a committed Democrat.
{mosads}“Well, I can’t answer that,” Clinton said when pressed near the end of a lengthy podcast interview with Politico’s Glenn Thrush if she thought the Independent Vermont senator was a Democrat.
“He’s a relatively new Democrat, and in fact I’m not even sure he is one — he’s running as one. So I don’t know quite how to characterize him. I’ll leave that to him,” she added.
Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, declared last year that he was committed to the Democratic Party when he decided to run for its nomination.
“I made a decision in this presidential election that I will run as a Democrat. I am a Democrat now,” Sanders said during an interview in November on ABC News.
Sanders has won seven of the last eight Democratic contests, including Wisconsin on Tuesday, but faces an uphill battle for delegates.
Clinton and Sanders are ratcheting up their rhetoric as the former secretary of State looks to defend turf in New York ahead of the state’s April 19 primary.
During the podcast interview, Clinton also addressed views of her untrustworthiness that have hung over her campaign, along with a federal probe into her email arrangement as secretary of State.
“I do think that I am somebody who is perhaps more private — not for bad reasons, it’s just my personality, it’s my temperament,” she said.