Massachusetts senator endorses presumptive Democratic nominee and puts herself in the frame as possible vice-presidential candidate.
Senator Elizabeth Warren has declared herself ready to be Hillary Clinton’s running mate in the US presidential election.
The Massachusetts senator – popular among the progressive wing of the Democratic party – made the declaration shortly after endorsing Clinton, calling her “a fighter with guts” who would keep Donald Trump out the White House.
In an interview on MSNBC, Warren was asked by Rachel Maddow: “If you were asked to be Secretary Clinton’s running mate, do you believe you could do it?”
Her response was concise: “Yes, I do.”
In another interview with the Boston Globe on Thursday, Warren endorsed Clinton as the party’s presidential nominee, saying: “I’m ready to jump in this fight and make sure that Hillary Clinton is the next president of the United States and be sure that Donald Trump gets nowhere near the White House.”
According to the Globe she also praised Clinton’s primary opponent, Bernie Sanders, saying that he had run an “incredible campaign”.
Speaking to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Thursday evening, Warren said the Sanders campaign had been “powerfully important”.
“He ran a campaign from the heart, and he ran a campaign where he took these issues and really thrust them into the spotlight – issues that are near and dear to my heart – and he brought millions of people into the democratic process,” she said.
But, Warren said, “Hillary Clinton won. And she won because she’s a fighter, she’s out there, she’s tough. And I think this is what we need.”
Warren’s endorsement came within hours of President Barack Obama formally giving his endorsement to Clinton’s candidacy. “I’m with her,” Obama said, in a video recorded on Tuesday. “I don’t think there has ever been someone so qualified to hold this office.”
Vice-President Joe Biden also appeared to give his endorsement on Thursday, referring in a speech to “… whoever the next president is – and God willing it will be Hillary Clinton”.
Warren, a favourite of the progressive left who taught constitutional law at Harvard, is seen as a possible running mate who could help entice back a disaffected left that has been excited by Sanders but ambivalent about Clinton.
Warren has been especially fierce recently in her criticism of Donald Trump, attacking the presumptive Republican nominee in a searing string of speeches, setting herself up for a prominent and pugilistic role in the presidential election whether she is on the ticket or not.
Earlier on Thursday, at a speech to the American Constitution Society in Washington DC, Warren hit out at Trump as “just a businessman who inherited a fortune and kept it rolling along by cheating people”.
She described him as “a loud, nasty, thin-skinned fraud who … serves no one but himself”, and said his attacks on Gonzalo Curiel, the federal judge presiding over the Trump University suit, was “exactly what you would expect from somebody who is a thin-skinned racist bully”.
(Theguardian US)
