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In the second hour of a new four-part Hulu documentary series about her life and the 2016 presidential election campaign, Hillary Clinton begins telling a story.

Its specifically in relation to the Whitewater scandal that plagued Bill Clintons first administration, but could be applied to any number of controversies that Hillary addresses: the email server, the Wall Street speech transcripts, the stayed home and baked cookies uproar, Benghazi, Monica Lewinsky, and the sexism she faced campaigning against Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.

All these things about us get disproved, she says. But the press, and Im talking about the major organs of the press, not the Breitbarts and the InfoWars and the crazy people, they always bite. And I dont know why.

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She starts telling an old joke about a guy whos walking along the edge of a cliff and slips. As hes falling, he grabs onto a branch. While hanging on for his life, he prays. God Ive lived a good life. You know I have. Ive done everything Im supposed to do. I was a good husband. I was a good father. I was an honest person. Please Lord, help me!

A mischievous smile creeps across Clintons face as she prepares to land the punchline, adopting the voice of God as he gives the man his response: You know, theres just something about you that just pisses me off.

Directed by Oscar nominee Nanette Burstein (On the Ropes), Hillary premiered Saturday afternoon to a packed house at the Sundance Film Festival, the first of several events that Clinton will participate in at Park City to promote the series ahead of its March 6 premiere on Hulu.

Bursteins approach is both expansive and intimate, with an exploration of Hillary Rodhams formative years as president of Young Republicans at Wellesley College and crusading lawyer working for childrens rights and her time supporting Bill Clintons political rise, all juxtaposed with her experience in the historic 2016 presidential election.

The series makes good use of a treasure trove of archival personal artifacts and unseen behind-the-scenes campaign footage, as well as freewheeling remarks from the Clinton family, their staff, and friends, grounding the gravitas of the subjects with a pleasant, somewhat surprising casualness from Clinton and her aides.

Theres breaking news, whether its an extensive explanation of the email server controversy and her defense of her actionsall delivered without election-season spinand the Clintons discussing how emotionally volatile their marriage became as they weathered the Monica Lewinsky scandal and she grappled with whether to stay with him.

Her comments about Bernie Sanders have already made headlines, as she expressed her frustration over the ways in which he propagated the narrative that she was corrupt, which she felt was baseless and opportunistic. She also laments that he wasnt qualified to challenge her in the race.

Honestly, Bernie drove me crazy, she says. He was in the Senate for years. Years! He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him. Nobody wants to work with him. He got nothing done. He was a career politician. He did not work until he was like 41, and then he got elected to something. It was all just baloney, and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it. Afterwards, she lets out a heavy sigh.

Its moments like this, or when she shrugs and dismisses the controversy over her Wall Street speechesI gave a speech for an hour, and they paid methat beg the question of what exactly Hillary is as a non-fiction work.

Theres obvious interest here: a polarizing figure puts her own controversies in context, seizing control of her reputation while examining what contributed to it. But that control itself is curious.

Hillary joins a unique, somewhat bizarre, yet increasingly popular form of storytelling, in which subjects dont just grant access, but are participants in a projects marketing and celebration as well. (Case in point: The Netflix documentary about Taylor Swift that also premiered at Sundance, pop star in tow.)

Would Hillary Clinton be appearing at events in support of Hillary had it been more scrutinous of her than this series is? If she hadnt been able to stop lines of questioning or deeper explorations of topics that made her too uncomfortable?

Its a work thats torn between biography and hagiography. Its the kind of thing you could imagine playing at a convention, considering the rose-colored filter it places on her rise to prominence. But theres more truth-telling than a piece of veiled propaganda like that could ever boast, with Clinton far more candid about hot-button issues than she ever could have been during an election.

Still, all of her defenses, opinions, assessments, and arguments go unquestioned. She can deliver a self-aware deconstruction of what went wrong in her campaign and the mistakes she made in handling certain things, but outside of archival footage, the only one who ever criticizes Hillary Clinton in the documentary is her.

Its a treatment of a person called both one of the most admired and one of the most vilified women in American history by senior campaign policy adviser Jake Sullivan. It is at once complete, controlled, exposed, shielded, provocative, and entirely expected. Perhaps its fitting for the most complete chronicling yet of such a polarizing figure to be torn between dichotomies.

Yet even despite its flaws and its inherent bias, its incredibly watchable. Four hours fly by. Youre inspired, illuminated, and educatedor, as the 2016 campaign is revisited, triggered, angered, and depressed. But of course the thing is compelling. Few subjects are as compelling as Hillary Clinton. Especially in her to-camera confessionals, shes as captivating as shes ever been.

The first question of the documentary asks Clinton if she gets frustrated that after 30 years in public life, people still say they dont know who she really is, and that she seems inauthentic. I do, she says. What is this about? When people say Im inauthentic, what you see is what you get. Im sorry if Im not brilliantly charismatic on TV. But I am the same person Ive always been. Going through this gauntlet of unbelievable obstacles, yeah, you get scarred up a little bit.

Then Take Back the Power by the ska punk band The Interrupters plays as a rapidfire slideshow of images of her life plays. Its a jarring hint at how scattered the approach is here.

Clinton seems most at ease when given the opportunity to chronicle the tick-tock of her own exasperation as scandals she assumed were non-stories exploded and surpassed what she felt was overblown.

When people say Im inauthentic, what you see is what you get. Im sorry if Im not brilliantly charismatic on TV. But I am the same person Ive always been.

She thought the email scandal would be a two-day news story. Colin Powell and other secretaries of state had done the same thing, she explains. I did it as a matter of convenience. There was no regulation against it. There was nothing against it. Everybody knew I was doing it, because they were all emailing me and I was emailing them. That was hundreds and hundreds of people in the government.

But it fed into broader narratives of the Clintons being corrupt and hiding things. It was my job to figure out a way to better handle it, which I never did, she said.

The documentary finds a way to talk about the misogyny she facedthe likability factorin a way that is intelligent and illuminating without martyrdom or whining per se, though you could argue the proper amount of bitterness: Honest to God, do you think anybody talked to Bernie Sanders about his goddamn shoes?

A full half of the series is devoted to her 2016 campaign, and the peek behind the curtain often makes for the most fascinating coverage, making one wonder if a straightforward campaign documentary would have been a stronger approach. You could watch their closed-door strategizing for days. Its a visceral experience, especially as their helpless bafflement escalates with regards to how to deal with Donald Trumps blatant lies and the megaphone the media gave them.

Election night footage is devastating. I was totally emotionally wrecked, she recalls. I felt like I let everybody down. I worried that he wouldnt rise to the occasion. That all the forces hed unleashed had been rewarded. It made me sick to my stomach. It didnt make sense.

Her eyes well with tears as she recounts the experience of delivering her concession speech the morning after the election. It was really, really tough not crying, not getting a catch in my throat, she says. Immediately after I got off the stage and held people who were crying, all the pent-up emotion came spilling out. Finally Bill and I left, and I just collapsed in the back of the van. I was like, what just happened?

Hillary, then, is an incredibly emotional viewing experience, both in the way it pays proper tribute to her place in history and the accomplishments she earnedits hard to fight off tears as she recounts her various achievements as a woman in politicsand in the feelings it dredges up about the 2016 election. No doubt theres a mission, too, to elicit empathy for the woman who weathered these public scandals she was often demonized for her handling of.

Early in the documentary, Clinton relays a story about a time someone asked her what she wants on her gravestone. Her reply: Shes not nearly as good or as bad as people say about her.

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Hillary Slams Bernie and Shrugs Off Email Scandal in New Doc - The Daily Beast

Ahead of the Sundance premiere of her new Hulu docuseries Hillary, Clinton spoke to Vulture about concessions speeches, Newt Gingrich, and supporting Bernie Sanders. Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images

Theres something weirdly cathartic about Nanette Bursteins four-part docuseriesHillary, which premiered this past weekend at the Sundance Film Festival and will air on Hulu this March. The film tackles the broad arc of Hillary Rodham Clintons life and career by intercutting behind-the-scenes footage of the 2016 election with events from the rest of her life, alongside extensive interviews with Clinton herself, as well as numerous staffers, friends, journalists, and politicians, including Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Weve had plenty of memoirs and biographies about this stuff, but seeing it all on film allows us to make critical connections and notice patterns. (Consider the whipsawing reactions to her politics: too left, too right, too center, and never ever just right.) Watching the four-hour series which flies by, thanks in part to surprisingly forthright interviews with both Hillary and Bill Clinton, but also to Bursteins energetic direction of the material you experience a compressed version of all the many different feelings youve probably had about the former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State over the years, and you probably question a few of your initial reactions as well. I certainly did. We discussed all this and more when I sat down with Secretary Clinton and Burstein in Park City, Utah.

Which one of you had more trepidation about doing this movie?Hillary Clinton: [Laughs.] I think that might be a tie!

Nanette Burstein: Yeah, exactly. Certainly, for me, its a hard story to get right. Theres so much information and its so complicated, at least the way I conceived it. I also knew that, because Secretary Clinton has polarizing reactions, the reaction to the film could also be polarizing, depending on how you see the world.

HC: For me, when this all started, it was going to be a film about the campaign. We had about 1,700 hours of behind-the-scenes footage, and people approached us and said, Wed love to get access to that. Wed love to think about doing a campaign movie. I was all in favor of that, because I thought, number one, there was probably some good stuff. It was a real opportunity to highlight the roles that so many people played, and maybe do a better job of explaining what was going on. And then I was presented with a couple of directors. I met Nanette, and she seemed not only to have done some very good films before, but understood, or would work to understand, the complexity of the story. And thats indeed what happened. Then they came back and said, Hey, you know what? We want to make it about you and your life, and how it fits into the arc of womens history and political history in our country.

What was the most surprising thing in this film for you?HC: Well, I dont know if Id describe it as a surprise, but I was really impressed by the way Nanette wove in different phases of my life and events that were happening not in a straight, chronological way, but very skillfully moving from the past to the present, and doing it in every episode, so that you were constantly seeing what happened in 2016, juxtaposed with what I was doing fighting for health care in the White House [in the 1990s] and being burned in effigy by people who didnt want us to get health care. So it was surprising, because I wouldnt know how to do that. Id have no idea how to do that! But it was really effective.

Did it make you think differently about certain parts of your career at all, that juxtaposition?HC: No, because I think it showed that I have not only been consistent, but Ive been consistently subjected to an ongoing campaign to undermine or polarize or diminish what I was doing and standing for. I knew that, because Id lived through it but seeing it on the screen and watching it over four hours just drove that home. For example, one thing that she put in was my going to ground zero after 9/11, the very next day. And thats a fact. I was there. There are pictures of me there. And for the last several years, Rudy Giuliani has been saying I wasnt there. You think to yourself,What would motivate him to do that?Well, he comes from the school of Tell the lie enough and people might believe it, even contrary to their own eyes. And he didnt want to admit that I was instrumental in doing what we did to rebuild New York. That was really telling, to see that in the film.

Are you familiar with the concept of the sleeper effect? Its the idea that information from unreliable sources, even though you recognize them as unreliable, over a period of time, they stick in your head. So you remember the information, but you forget where you heard it. I think this really applies to the way people view you. Id see people on the left in 2016 parroting talking points that I remember coming from the extreme right 20 years ago.HC: Theres another element to that I hadnt heard that particular phrase, but I know the phenomenon and that is you lie about somebody often enough, even when the lies are disproved, even people who generally favor you or even know you, they cant get it out of their heads. [Former House Majority Leader] Kevin McCarthy is in the film, basically saying [about the Benghazi hearings], Remember what her numbers were when she got out of being Secretary of State? 68 percent, 69 percent favorability. Wow, look what we did to her.

Hillary Clinton after Bill Clinton became governor of Arkansas. Photo: Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Because of the way a film in general compresses timelines, and because of the way this particular film cuts between the distant past and the more recent past, the divergence of opinions around you becomes so much more pronounced. I remember in the early-to-mid-1990s, people thought you were this raging lefty who was pulling poor centrist Bill Clinton to the left the devil on his shoulder. Then, flash-forward to 2016, and now youre accused of being the corporate shill, too conservative, all this stuff. It was fascinating to see those juxtaposed.HC: Yeah, interesting, isnt it?

NB: Amy Chozick, the New YorkTimesreporter, has a great sound bite: For most of her career, she was fighting against the notion that she was this bra-burning liberal, and now shes trying to convince the people that sheisa liberal, and it had to be frustrating that people just didnt understand who she was at all. Youre damned if you do, and damned if you dont.

Were you worried about potentially interjecting yourself into the current election? Obviously, this happened recently withyour comments about Bernie Sanders in the filmkind of blowing up all over the press.HC: No, I really wasnt. And first of all, I had no control over when it would be done and when it would be released. That was the decisions of the filmmaker and Hulu. But I didnt particularly worry about it, because Im firmly on the side of making sure we retire Donald Trump and electing whoever our Democratic nominee is. And I think in a way, this film might for some voters explain why the stakes are so high. The obstacles to a lot of the progress that many of us would like to see dont change: financial interests, religious and ideological interests that really want to turn the clock back. And when you think about this upcoming election, its going to be a real challenge to defeat Trump, and weve got to all be united to get that done.

Have you heard from Bernie Sanders since the comments came out?HC: No, but it was like 15 seconds in a four-hour documentary.

Well, but you know how it is.HC: Yeah, I do know how it is. I said the same day, Look, Im going to support whoever the nominee is. And I know how important that is, because I did that in 08, when I actually got more votes than Barack Obama, but he got more delegates. And as soon as that happened, I turned around, I dropped out, I endorsed him, I campaigned for him, I went to the floor of the convention to move his nomination by acclamation. That didnt happen for me. I won by a huge margin for a primary, 4 million votes, and they were litigating it down to 24 hours before the election. And I think we have to speak out about that and make very clear we cant let that happen again.

I think about the speeches of yours that have moved me the most. Its 2008, your speech right after Barack Obama clinches the nomination. Then again in 2008, your speech at the Democratic National Convention. And then in 2016, your concession speech. To be fair, these are iconic speeches now, but I also think to myself,Why is it that its always in failure or defeat that I and others wind up most admiring Hillary Clinton?HC: I really cant answer that. I can speculate that women seeking power are still an oddity to some extent. And the relief at being able to just watch and react to a woman whos not asking you for power who is once again in an understandable social role of supporting somebody else, or acknowledging that she fell short has a resonance with people. Theres no confusion or complexity about it, because, you know, Im not running for anything. Im not holding any public office. And I think it gives people a clearer view of who Ive always been, but who they can now maybe see me again as being.

NB: One of my favorite stories in the film was from her childhood. Her close childhood friend, Betsy Ebeling, is talking about how she wanted to run for president of the class, and no girl was ever elected president. And Hillary still tried, being Hillary. And she didnt win. But then the guy who did win asked her to do all the work. I just feel like that happens still today. I see it in Hollywood. I see all of the people at the top are men, and then theres women just underneath them, and I just find it baffling that in 2020 this is still happening in so many different industries.

HC: But I think this is really deep. I dont think its that conscious with most people. Once you fall back into a recognizable role or position, it liberates people to exhale and say, Okay, I dont have to make a decision about hiring her as a director, or nominating her for an Oscar, or voting for her and shes not a bad person and shes actually doing a good job. I think theres so much embedded in our continuing unpacking of gender and stereotypes and caricatures, and I hope that this film sparks a conversation about that. Even your question, which was a very honest question: Why did people love my concession speech? I think I gave a lot of other good speeches, but I was just overwhelmed by the noise. There was just a tremendous amount of other stuff going on. So once you get to the end point, and its over, and you have to give a speech because thats whats expected of you, people go,Oh, and they love it on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and all of that. Because its like,Okay, I understand this role.I was conflicted, confused about the other role, because thats not what I could envision.

NB: People would say, Well, where was Hillary Clinton during the campaign making this kind of speech? I watched all of these speeches from her campaign, because I inherited all the behind-the-scenes, including all of the different events she did. And shemadethese kinds of speeches, but no one was tuning in or paying attention.

HC: Well, it was hard to compete with the overwhelming reality-TV performance of Trump. They wouldnt show my speech, but theyd show an empty podium waiting for him. Because he was exciting. He was good for ratings. He was good for profits. You never knew what he was going to say. Who would he insult? Id get up and give this boring speech about how were going to get health care for everybody. The press wasnt interested in that. Policys not important, personality is important, which is one of the messes weve got ourselves in when it comes to our politics because it really does matter what people stand for, what they say theyre going to do, and whether they can deliver. I saw this in real time, and it was very tough to compete with that.

As youre making the film, does whats happening in the news affect how youre structuring things, how the story is being told?NB: Probably, to an extent. When we were just starting to edit the project, it was during the Kavanaugh hearings, and it reminded me so much of what we address in the film with the Anita Hill hearings, and the same history is playing out. And then the same backlash happens, where then we vote in a number of women into Senate and Congress. Back [in 1992], it was only six women, which was revolutionary at the time. And it was infinitely more in this past election. But yes, it was remarkable to watch history repeating itself all the time.

Who did you reach out to that didnotwant to be in the film?NB: About 30 different conservatives, maybe more. Yeah, it was very hard to get voices from the other side of the aisle.

Was there anybody you really wanted and tried hard to get?NB: There were two voices in the conservative party I was really hoping would sit down with me. One was Newt Gingrich, because he was such a presence from the other side during the White House years. The other was Lindsey Graham, because he worked closely with Secretary Clinton when she was in the Senate, but has a very different opinion and language about her today. And both, there was no equivocation about it. Newt Gingrich first said no diplomatically, in writing. And then I was able to reach him on a cell phone, and he said, Id rather stick a needle in my eye than sit down for an interview about it. Even though I was very clear that this is fair and balanced, theres no editorial control from [the Clintons]. And Lindsey Grahams office could not have responded quicker. Basically they were like,Are you kidding me?

HC: That just shows you how far the other side has gone in its uncompromising, ideological, partisan positioning. I traveled with Lindsey Graham and John McCain. I worked with [Graham] on a few issues. He wrote an article praising me a few years ago for, I thinkTime 100. But Trump has so captured the Republican Party and the minds of so many of these officials that they wont say or do anything. Theyre scared. You know, Trent Lott, the senator from Mississippi, was the majority leader during part of the time I was in the Senate. And I mean, he told people, She was great to work with. She really could get things done. She helped enormously after Katrina, based on her experience with 9/11. Thats all on the public record. But today they wouldnt be caught saying anything positive. And its very troubling that weve gotten to this point, and its not a both sides issue. It istheirissue. They are the ones who are refusing to resume what I would consider as a normal political debate over important issues.

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Hillary Clinton Has a Theory on Why People Love Her Most When Shes Losing - Vulture

Remember when Jimmy Carter published a whiny, self-serving book about his political downfall called What Happened? Remember when Mike Dukakis pushed filmmakers to do a four-hour fan documentary about himself? Remember when George H.W. Bush mocked Bill Clinton at the Grammys? Yeah, me neither.

Previous losing presidential candidates had the dignity to back off and bow out of politics. Yet here is Hillary Rodham Clinton, the recurrent canker sore on Americas butt, which is politics. This week she again tried to reintroduce herself to us all as anything but what she is, which is a sore loser. Her attempts to scramble back into the political spotlight after the American people booed her off the stage have been so pathetic that she resorted to calling Army major and Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard a Russian asset a loony insult that this week got Clinton socked with a lawsuit for defamation.

How funny would it be if Hillary were forced to transfer a chunk of her filthy fortune to Tulsi?

This week, to promote the upcoming four-hour Sundance/Hulu documentary Hillary, a project launched by Hillary herself, Clinton gave an interview to The Hollywood Reporter in which she turned on one of her partys two front-runners for the presidential race, proving yet again that God sent Hillary Rodham Clinton to earth as a beautiful gift to the Republican Party.

What could be more delightful than to hear Rotten Rodham pelt Bernie Sanders with her sour grapes?

He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done, Clinton said in the film, sticking by the remarks in the interview.

He was a career politician. Its all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it.

Career politician? Sanders drives a 2010 Chevy subcompact. The car he drove in the 1980s, when he was mayor of Burlington, was so pathetic it was once nearly ticketed by a meter maid who, when she saw it parked in the space reserved for the mayor, couldnt believe any mayor would ever drive such a thing.

Hillary Clinton is far worse than a career politician shes a kleptocrat who got rich selling access to herself to lobbyists and foreigners. Bernie may be barmy but he is not for sale and he never made any money to speak of until his book Our Revolution became a hit in 2016.

As for the nobody likes him, honey, thats like your husband calling Mitt Romney a skirt chaser.

In the interview Hillary wouldnt even commit to backing Bernie in the general election, should he be the Democrats pick.

What the fudge, Madam Pantsuit? Havent you been saying President Trump is a dire threat to democracy?

Yet when asked whether shed support Sanders over Trump, she said, Im not going to go there yet. Were still in a very vigorous primary season, then hinted that she might withhold her endorsement because of the Bernie Bros.

Some of Bernies Twitter trolls are such a nuisance that shes not sure she can endorse Sanders over Trump?

If there is any doubt whatsoever in her mind about whether to back Sanders after he becomes the nominee, this reduces to rubble any future statements she may make that Trump is uniquely unfit or uniquely dangerous for office. Her petty feud with Team Sanders makes it clear that her differences with Trump are equally petty, and derived from the same source: her embarrassment about how badly she did against these two long-shot outsiders.

So keep talking, Hillary.

Youre the Republican Partys most valuable spokesperson.

Kyle Smith is critic-at-large at National Review

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Why Hillary Clinton is the world's greatest gift to Republicans - New York Post

Former Secretary of State Hillary ClintonHillary Diane Rodham ClintonGOP senator says idea that Ukraine interfered in US election is 'not a conspiracy theory' Cotton: Democrats are 'upset that their witnesses haven't said what they want them to say' Trump's troubles won't end with a Senate acquittal MORE on Tuesday evening saidshe would backwhichever candidate is chosen to bethe Democratic nominee for president after a broadside she made against Sen. Bernie SandersBernie SandersPoll: Sanders leads Biden by 9 points in Iowa Poll: Biden leads in Iowa ahead of caucuses The Memo: Impeachment dominates final Iowa sprint MORE (I-Vt.) sparked heavy criticism earlier in the day.

I thought everyone wanted my authentic, unvarnished views! But to be serious, 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, Clinton tweeted Tuesday evening.

I thought everyone wanted my authentic, unvarnished views!

But to be serious, 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.

Her tweet cameafter Clintondrew backlash earlier Tuesday for saying in an as-yet-unreleased Hulu documentary that "nobody likes Sanders," who ran against herin the 2016 Democratic primary.

"He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. 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," Clinton said.

Clinton went on to accuse Sanderss camp of tolerating relentless attacks on his primary competitors, particularly women.

"I will say, however, that it's not only him. It's the culture around him. It's his leadership team. It's his prominent supporters. It's his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women," she said.

"And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture not only permitted, seems to really be very much supporting it," she added.

The comments also come after reportssurfaced that Sanders told Sen. Elizabeth WarrenElizabeth Ann WarrenPoll: Sanders leads Biden by 9 points in Iowa Poll: Biden leads in Iowa ahead of caucuses The Memo: Impeachment dominates final Iowa sprint MORE (D-Mass.) that a woman could not win the 2020 presidential race against President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump denies telling Bolton Ukraine aid was tied to investigations Former senior Senate GOP aide says Republicans should call witnesses Title, release date revealed for Bolton memoir MORE. Warren insisted Sanders made the remark; Sanders denied doing so.

The 2016 primarycontestbetween Clinton and Sanders was particularly fraught, with some Sanders supporters saying he lost the race only because of bias against him within the Democratic National Committee (DNC). The acrimony between the two camps was further fueled after Sanders waited several months to endorse Clinton.

The latest criticism of Sanders by Clinton, who maintains a loyal following of her own, raised fears among progressives that the former secretary of State would not throw her support behind Sanders should he win the 2020 nomination.

I hope that Clintons closest allies ... can talk to her about this. She has the ability to mobilize a part of the Democratic base, and it would be absolutely terrible for her not to fully support the Democratic nominee, said Saikat Chakrabarti, the former spokesperson for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-CortezAlexandria Ocasio-CortezThe Memo: Impeachment dominates final Iowa sprint 'The worst news': Political world mourns loss of Kobe Bryant Biden leads 2020 pack in congressional endorsements MORE (D-N.Y.).

Sanders supporters also took to Twitter, making the hashtag "#ILikeBernie"lead the list of trending termsin the U.S. to back up their candidate.

Sanders maintained he would not get sidetracked by Clintons remarks, saying his focus remained on defeating President Trump and the ongoing impeachment inquiry.

My focus today is on a monumental moment in American history: the impeachment trial of Donald Trump. Together, we are going to go forward and defeat the most dangerous president in American history, he said in a statement.

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Hillary Clinton responds to backlash: 'I will do whatever I can to support our nominee' | TheHill - The Hill

Listening to Clinton, I was struck by how remarkably similar her account was to something Zuckerberg had once told me. Facts, Zuckerberg had suggested, are best derived from foraging many opinions, ideally from the billions of humans who use his publishing platform, so that each individual might cherry-pick what to believe. (Cherry-pick is my word, not his.) If journalisms mantra is Seek truth and report it, Facebooks might be Seek opinions and react to them. Its not about saying, Heres one view; heres the other side, Zuckerberg had said when Id asked him to reconcile the apparent contradiction between fact and opinion. You should decide where you want to be.

Hillary Clinton: American democracy is in crisis

I wrote at the time that Zuckerbergs interpretation was unsatisfying for one thing, and Trumpian for another. When I asked Clinton today whether she too sees a Trumpian quality in Zuckerbergs reasoning, she nodded. Its Trumpian, she said. Its authoritarian. (Facebook did not immediately provide a response to my request for comment from Zuckerberg.)

Clintons allusions to Zuckerberg as a world leader are fitting. I feel like youre negotiating with a foreign power sometimes, she said, referencing conversations shes had at the highest levels with Facebook. Hes immensely powerful, she told me. This is a global company that has huge influence in ways that were only beginning to understand.

Facebook is, in a sense, the worlds first technocratic nation-statea real-time experiment in connecting humans at massive and unprecedented scale, with a population of users that eclipses any actual nation, nearly as big as China and India combined. Its also an institution with gigantic levers at its disposal to affect the lives of its user-citizens. Facebook knows this. It has played with manipulating peoples emotions. It has trumpeted its ability to affect the outcome of an election. Theres good reason to believe, Clinton said, that Facebook is not just going to reelect Trump, but intend[s] to reelect Trump. We know for sure, at least, that Zuckerberg doesnt want Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts to be the president. In leaked audio of an internal Facebook meeting that emerged last fall, he referenced Warrens interest in regulating Facebook and said he would go to the mat and fight her.

Clinton seems to find the whole thing deeply unnerving. Zuckerberg has been somehow persuaded, she said, that its to his and Facebooks advantage not to cross Trump. Thats what I believe. And it just gives me a pit in my stomach.

Facebook often defends its equivocations about the truth by claiming that it must protect the free speech of its users. They have, in my view, contorted themselves into making arguments about freedom of speech and censorship, Clinton said, which they are hanging on to because its in their commercial interests. Of course, the right to free speech is about protecting citizens from government overreachand does not concern a persons use of corporate publishing platforms. Incidentally, Trump has similarly co-opted the meaning of free speech and truth for his own political and personal gain. If it makes Trump look good, its true; if it does not, then its fake news. Perhaps the logical extension of all this is as follows: Whats good for Trump is good for Facebook, and vice versa.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

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Hillary Clinton: Mark Zuckerberg Has Authoritarian Views on Misinformation - The Atlantic