Clinton wants Sanders to help unify party after primaries

PHOTOGRAPHER: The New York Times

Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton participates in a discussion on foster care at Community Coalition in Los Angeles, May 24, 2016.

Hillary Clinton, who’s almost sure to win enough delegates Tuesday to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, said Sunday that Bernie Sanders must help her unify the party after their extended battle.

“After Tuesday, I’m going to do everything I can to reach out, to try to unify the Democratic Party,” Clinton said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “I expect Senator Sanders to do the same and we will come together and be prepared to go to the convention in a unified way, to make our case to leave the convention and go into the general election to defeat Donald Trump.”

Clinton stopped short of saying that the Vermont senator, who has suggested he could take his fight to the convention and try to sway superdelegates who now support Clinton, should withdraw after Tuesday. She said, however, that the two have more in common than either has with Republicans.

Sanders said on the same program that he would work to defeat presumptive Republican nominee Trump no matter who the Democratic nominee was. He said his campaign could win significant victories Tuesday, when California, New Jersey, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota and South Dakota vote.

In two interviews on Sunday, Clinton focused her attention on Trump, blaming his heated rhetoric for recent violence by anti-Trump protesters in California.

“He created an environment in which it seemed to be acceptable for someone running for president to be inciting violence,” she said on CNN. “Trump has lowered the bar. And now is it a surprise that people who don’t like him are stepping over that low bar? I don’t think it is.”

Clinton also rejected an accusation by Trump, who was endorsed by the National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, that she wanted to abolish the Second Amendment.

“Once again, you have Donald Trump just making outright fabrications, accusing me of something that is absolutely untrue,” Clinton said on ABC’s “This Week.”

A policy adviser to her campaign had told Bloomberg in May that the candidate believed the 2008 Supreme Court ruling that held that the Second Amendment protected an individual’s right to own a firearm for lawful purposes was “wrongly decided” and “may open the door to overturning thoughtful, common sense safety measures in the future.”

Clinton on ABC said that if an individual’s right to bear arms “is a constitutional right, then it, like every other constitutional right, is subject to reasonable regulation.”

She also said she would not commit to a 25 percent sales tax on handguns and automatic weapons, which in 1993 she said she was “all for” and felt “very strongly about.”

“I was speaking personally then,” Clinton said when asked on ABC about the comments. “I would have to consider any proposal in light of how it interacted with all the others that we want to continue to advocate for, particularly, as I said, comprehensive background checks.”