US Senator Bernie Sanders has come back swinging at Hillary Clinton after she claimed that "nobody likes him".
The former presidential candidate made her comments in a new documentary, where she accused Sanders of being unliked and a "career politician".
Sanders - who is among those vying for the Democratic presidential candidacy - told an NBC reporter on Wednesday: "On a good day, my wife likes me, so let's clear the air on that one."
Responding to his comments, Clinton jokingly tweeted that she thought everyone wanted to hear her "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," she said.
Clinton's new documentary is set to premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this week, and in it she suggested that Sanders didn't have any friends.
"He was in Congress for years," she said in the documentary. "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."
The four-part series Hillary will be publicly released on Hulu in the US in March. The comments made in the documentary were said in 2016.
Sanders initially brushed off her comments on Wednesday, saying his focus is on President Donald Trump's impeachment trial.
"Together, we are going to go forward and defeat the most dangerous president in American history," Sanders said.
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter on Tuesday, Clinton said she stood by her comments from the documentary, and she also took aim at those around him.
"It's not only him, it's the culture around him," she said. "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."
Sanders recently sparked controversy when Elizabeth Warren, who is also running for the Democratic candidacy, said he told her in a private meeting that a woman couldn't win the White House in 2020.
Sanders denied making the comment, saying it's "incomprehensible" he would think such a thing.
Clinton wouldn't confirm to The Hollywood Reporter whether she would endorse Sanders for the Democratic nomination, but she did say that the controversy over his comment was "part of a pattern".
"If it were a one-off, you might say, 'OK, fine.' But he said I was unqualified. I had a lot more experience than he did, and got a lot more done than he had, but that was his attack on me.
"I just think people need to pay attention because we want, hopefully, to elect a president who's going to try to bring us together, and not either turn a blind eye, or actually reward the kind of insulting, attacking, demeaning, degrading behaviour that we've seen from this current administration."
Clinton added that although many people had asked her to run for president again, she's ruled it out and believes the right thing to do is step back.
