Hillary Clinton Says Winning Next Election Is 'Most Important Thing' but Running Herself Is 'Out of Question'

The former secretary of state told the Financial Times in a recent interview that the alternative to winning "is so frightening that whatever does not help you win should not be a priority"

Hillary Clinton. Photo: Albert Cara/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

While she says that Democrats winning the next presidential election is "the most important thing," don't expect Hillary Clinton to launch another campaign.

In a new interview with the Financial Times, the former secretary of state said it's "out of the question" that she would run for the presidency in 2024, adding that she anticipates throwing her support behind President Joe Biden.

"First of all, I expect Biden to run," she told the outlet. "He certainly intends to run. It would be very disruptive to challenge that."

The 74-year-old also voiced her opinion that, in order to win more elections, Democrats should focus on issues that "help you win," rather than those that only affect some segments of the population.

"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," she said.

Touching on the last presidential election, which former President Donald Trump (whom Clinton ran against in 2016) lost to Biden, the former first lady said she believes Trump knows that he lost — despite his continued insistence otherwise.

"I also believe in peaceful succession and transition and all of that ... That tells you everything you need to know about Republican strategy for 2024. Even in his reptilian brain, Trump has to know that he lost this time. He refuses to accept it because it wasn't supposed to happen," she said.

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Clinton's hypothesis is one backed up by former members of Trump's inner circle, including one-time White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah Griffin, who revealed during an appearance on CNN's State of the Union Monday that Trump privately confessed he lost the presidential election.

"He admitted, he blurted out watching Joe Biden on TV, 'Can you believe I lost to this guy?'" Griffin shared. "And he actually admitted in a press conference when he was speaking about coronavirus in a press briefing room, he actually slipped and kind of admitted that Joe Biden won."

Elsewhere in her conversation with the Financial Times, Clinton said she believes Trump will run again for the presidency if he can — adding that the outcome of that, or any, election could prove disastrous for the country.

"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."

Her latest comments echo similar remarks she made in an interview late last year, when Clinton said she expected Trump to run in 2024 and that it could be "the end of our democracy."

"I think that could be the end of our democracy," she said on Sunday TODAY with Willie Geist. "Not to be too pointed about it, but I want people to understand that this could be a make-or-break point. If he or someone of his ilk were once again to be elected president, especially if he had a Congress that would do his bidding, you will not recognize our country."