Bernie Sanders endorses Hillary Clinton for US election

Xinhua, July 13, 2016

Hillary Clinton's bitter rival in the Democratic Party presidential nomination race Bernie Sanders on Tuesday endorsed Clinton for the 2016 U.S. election.

"Secretary Clinton has won the Democratic nominating process," said Sanders in New Hampshire during his first joint rally with Clinton after a chaotic primary season.

"She will be the Democratic nominee for president and I intend to do everything I can to make certain she will be the next president of the United States," said Sanders.

Sanders' endorsement came more than a month after Clinton clinched the Democratic Party nomination, and brought to an end a chaotic and divisive Democratic primary season where he questioned Clinton's judgement as the country's future leader.

Standing onstage with Clinton on Tuesday in a state where he crushed the former U.S. secretary of state with a sweeping victory in the primary season, Sanders called Clinton "far and away the best candidate" to address the serious crisis facing the country.

"Too many Americans are still being left out, left behind and ignored. In the richest country in the history of the world, there is too much poverty, there is too much despair," said Sanders, adding that Clinton understood better than Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, that the country must fix a rigged economy that "sends almost all of the new wealth and income to the top one percent."

During the primary season, Sanders was a constant critic of Clinton's close tie to the Wall Street and criticized Clinton for her decision not to release transcripts of her paid speeches to big banks, such as Goldman Sachs.