Hillary Clinton has ruled out another run for the White House saying that it would be “disruptive” to compete against President Joe Biden.
The former Secretary of State told the Financial Times that the possibility of her running again was “out of the question” following her 2016 loss to Donald Trump as she said that she expects Mr Biden to run for a second term.
“No, out of the question,” she said when asked about a potential 2024 bid.
“First of all, I expect Biden to run. He certainly intends to run. It would be very disruptive to challenge that.”
Ms Clinton said she believes Mr Trump is also likely to enter the 2024 race, adding that she is unsure which GOP members will go up against him.
“I think, if he can, he’s going to run again,” she said.
“Follow the money with Trump – he’s raised about $130m sitting in his bank account that he used to travel around, to fund organising against elections… I don’t know who will challenge him in the Republican primary.”
She warned that the US is on the brink of “losing our democracy” and urged the Democratic party to come together to make sure they win the next election.
“We are standing on the precipice of losing our democracy, and everything that everybody else cares about then goes out the window,” she said.
“Look, the most important thing is to win the next election. The alternative is so frightening that whatever does not help you win should not be a priority.”
Pointing to the calls to defund the police, she raised concerns that the far left could pose a threat to the Democratic party’s chances of staying in the White House.
“You need accountable measures. But you also need policing. It doesn’t even pass the common-sense politics test not to believe that,” she said.
“Some positions are so extreme on both the right and the left that they retreat to their corners... Politics should be the art of addition not subtraction.”
Mr Biden has repeatedly said that he will run for re-election in 2024, despite rumoured concerns among his fellow Democrats around dismal poll numbers, his age and whether he can take on Mr Trump a second time.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre doubled down on his plans to run this week.
“What I can say is the president has repeatedly said that he plans to run in 2024, and I’m gonna have to leave it there,” she told CNN.
“All I can say is that the president intends to do what the president plans to do.”
A report in The Washington Post on Friday said that his team is planning to announce his bid in the spring of 2023 and has been pouring funds into key 2024 battleground states in preparation.
Meanwhile, Mr Trump has also repeatedly teased a 2024 bid, riling up a crowd at a conservative conference on Friday asking: “Would anybody like me to run for president?”
An election campaign for Mr Trump would come at a time when his role in the January 6 Capitol riot is under investigation and as he is facing several other criminal investigations into his business practices.
The January 6 hearings have so far presented damning testimony from Mr Trump’s own inner circle around how he ran a pressure campaign to get Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the presidential election, despite knowing that he had lost to Mr Biden.
