Tulsi Gabbard Rips Hillary Clinton Over Bernie Sanders Comments: 'This Isn't High School'

U.S. Representative Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii said in a Tuesday interview that the remarks made by Hillary Clinton in which she said that "nobody likes" Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont were reminiscent of insults hurled among "schoolyard cliques."

Gabbard, who is among the contenders vying for the Democratic Party's nomination for president, referred to remarks that Clinton, the former Secretary of State and senator from New York, reportedly made about Sanders in a new documentary. Sanders, too, is running in the primary to face off against President Donald Trump on behalf of the Democrats.

"Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done," Clinton said of Sanders, her rival in the Democratic primary of 2016, in an upcoming documentary according to an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. "He was a career politician. It's all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it."

In the interview with THR, Clinton continued to criticize not only Sanders but the toxic "culture" that has stemmed from his supporters, some of whom she called "Bernie Bros."

Gabbard, however, in a clip of an interview about Clinton's remarks published on Twitter by journalist Adam Sexton of New Hampshire ABC-affiliate WMUR-TV, said that Clinton's remarks were symptomatic of a larger problem among American leaders: a propensity to descend into petty feuds when larger issues were at hand.

"Look, it's time to grow up," Gabbard said in the interview. "This isn't high school. We're talking about real challenges that our country needs to address, and the need for real leadership to focus on them, not on what's going on in Washington and the schoolyard cliques, or whatever else it may be. There are real issues that people are struggling with, and they're wondering, 'Why are our leaders not working for us?'"

She further said that she was running for president precisely because she thought America's leaders needed to be above squabbling and be more in tune with "the reality of what people are dealing with every day."

Gabbard's office did not immediately reply to Newsweek's request for comment.

This is not the first time that Gabbard has had her differences with the former Secretary of State. The day after her interview with WMUR-TV, Gabbard sued Clinton for defamation. The suit is based on the claim that Clinton made in October 2019 that Gabbard was a "Russian asset," according to court documents.

Further, during the 2016 election, Gabbard attracted national headlines when she resigned from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) so that she could endorse Sanders for president over Clinton.

Gabbard had been the vice chair of the DNC before she broke with it, and cited the "the necessity to have a commander in chief who has foresight, who exercises good judgment" as her reason for endorsing Sanders.

Similarly, Gabbard has also criticized other Democrats for relying too heavily on their emotions in the impeachment of the president, and said that it would cause "lasting damage" in the party's efforts to replace Trump in the Oval Office in November 2020.

The documentary in which Clinton criticized Sanders, titled Hillary, is set to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 25 and on Hulu on March 6.