Hillary Clinton Blasts Donald Trump: 'We Were Not Friends'

Chelsea Clinton bluntly echoes her mom's chilly sentiment for Donald Trump

Photo: Natasha Moustache/WireImage; MediaPunch/REX/Shutterstock

brightcove.createExperiences(); Hillary Clinton may have been all-smiles-for-the-camera at Donald Trump‘s 2005 wedding. But ask her today if, after Trump has made her husband’s past infidelity a 2016 campaign issue, she could ever be friendly with the billionaire businessman again, Clinton is blunt.

“We were not friends,” the Democrat presidential candidate and former U.S. senator for New York says in an interview for the new issue of PEOPLE.

“We knew each other, obviously, in New York. I knew a lot of people.”

Back in the day, Trump’s take on the relationship was more warm fuzzies: “Hillary Clinton, I think, is a terrific woman,” Trump told Fox News in March 2012. “I have known her for years. I live in New York, she lives in New York, and I’ve known her and her husband for years and I really like them both a lot.”

In a campaign season notable for Trump’s slinging of personal insults, Clinton’s dimmed view of the man she said she once found “entertaining” is, perhaps, not surprising. It was Trump, after all, who first brought up former President Bill Clinton’s past behavior in December, when he Tweeted: “Hillary Clinton has announced that she is letting her husband out to campaign but HE’S DEMONSTRATED A PENCHANT FOR SEXISM, so inappropriate!”

Since then, several candidates – from Bernie Sanders to Rand Paul – have been asked by debate moderators, reporters and voters whether the issue Trump raised is fair game to use against Hillary Clinton.

Clinton tells PEOPLE: “I don’t really care that much about what he says about me because I do see that as, you know, politics – not particularly the brand I approve of.”

For more of our exclusive interview with Clinton and her daughter Chelsea, pick up the new issue of PEOPLE Friday and watch the full video below.

“I really care about what he says about other people, who don’t have the voice and the platform, who are never going to be interviewed by PEOPLE Magazine, who could never stand up for themselves and respond to whatever is being said,” Clinton says. “And I have met so many scared people hard-working immigrants who are scared. They’re scared what will happen to them. They’re scared that, you know, if he were to be successful – and others on the Republican side because he’s not the only one who makes these comments – what would happen to them and their families.

“I have looked in the eyes of a lot of American Muslims – doctors, business owners, lawyers, political leaders – and just seeing the confusion, the bewilderment, people who have lived in this country for decades. You know, What is he talking about? Why is he doing this? So I’m more concerned about the tone that is being set in the political debate this year because the last thing our country needs right now is more divisiveness, more mean-spiritedness.”

Clinton’s daughter Chelsea was also blunt.

“I’ve never had a relationship with Mr. Trump,” Chelsea tells PEOPLE in that same interview.

“My relationship has always been with [Trump’s daughter] Ivanka and certainly I do believe that friendship is more important than politics. I would never hold anyone accountable for what their parents or anyone else in their family said or did.”

Added Chelsea: “I see Ivanka as Ivanka.”