Clinton aide: Sanders’s attacks ‘play into the hands’ of Trump
An aide to Hillary Clinton on Monday warned that Democratic rival Bernie Sanders will only help presumptive GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump if he continues to attack Clinton after Tuesday’s primary contests.
“I do think that some of the rhetoric and some of the attacks that you’ve seen in the last couple weeks … only play into the hands of Donald Trump,” Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said during an interview on CNN.
{mosads}Trump has credited Sanders with originating some of his better attack lines against Clinton, including a barb about Clinton’s “bad judgment.”
Fallon mentioned the Sanders camp’s focus on the Clinton Foundation as an example of rhetoric
“Do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of State and a foundation run by her husband collects many, many dollars from foreign governments — governments which are dictatorships? … Yeah, I do have a problem with that,” Sanders told CNN.
Clinton is expected to win the necessary number of delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, when six contests will be held, including in New Jersey and California. But Sanders has given no indication that he’s ready to end his campaign and back Clinton.
Sanders in his CNN interview pushed back on the idea that he could snap his fingers and have his supporters back Clinton.
“It is Secretary Clinton’s job to explain to those people why she should get their support,” he said during an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Sunday.
The Clinton campaign made clear that it thinks Sanders has to play a role in unifying the party.
“It’s going to take two to tango,” Fallon said.
“Hillary Clinton is going to do her part. We expect Sen. Sanders to do his,” he added.
Fallon noted that Tuesday “actually presents some symmetry,” marking exactly eight years since Clinton formally ended her 2008 White House bid before working to help elect Barack Obama.
“At the bare minimum, I think what we can do, even if he does want to continue to influence the platform — which is his right— I think at the bare minimum, what he could do is not try to delegitimize the process or call into question the fact that Hillary Clinton is truly the nominee after Tuesday,” Fallon said.
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