Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) had a terse back-and-forth near the end of the Thursday-night Democratic presidential debate, during which Sanders accused Clinton of a "low blow."

Clinton took an opportunity to rip Sanders over his past criticism of President Barack Obama.

In an NBC interview that aired Thursday, Sanders took a slight dig at Obama for supposedly failing to close the "presidential leadership gap" between Congress and the American public.

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"The kind of criticism we've heard from Sen. Sanders about our president, I expect from Republicans," she continued. "I do not expect from someone running for the Democratic nomination to succeed President Obama."

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(Sanders) then turned to Clinton: "Have you ever disagreed with the president? I suspect you may have."

Clinton returned to her criticism of Sanders, accusing him of supporting calls for a 2012 primary opponent during Obama's reelection process.

"I think that goes further than saying, 'Hey, we have our disagreements,'" she said. "... Those kinds of personal assessments and charges are ones that I find particularly troubling."

Sanders returned with a scathing end to the back and forth.

"One of us ran against Barack Obama," he said. "I was not that candidate."

President Obama declined to criticize Hillary Clinton after his former secretary of state broke with his policy on Syria, even as he sharply criticized Republicans who have taken up similar ideas.

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The White House has ruled out for now the imposition of a no-fly zone of the country, but Clinton came out in favor of the policy Thursday night. “I personally would be advocating now for a no-fly zone and humanitarian corridors,” Clinton said in a TV interview in Boston.

Asked about the disagreement, and if she too is half-baked, Obama said that running for president is different from being president.

“Hillary Clinton is not half baked in terms of her approach to these problems,” he told reporters. “But I also think that there’s a difference between running for president and being president. And the decisions that are being made and the discussions that I’m having with the joint chiefs become much more specific, I think, and require a different kind of judgment.”

“If and when she’s president, then she’ll make those judgments, and she has been there enough that she knows that these are tough calls,” he added. “I think Hillary Clinton would be the first to say that when you’re sitting in the seat that I’m sitting in in the situation room, things look a little bit different, because she’s been right there next to me.”

Clinton has stuck very close to her former boss on most policy matters foreign and domestic, but the two have publicly broken in the past on Syria, when Clinton called for arming moderate rebels fighting the government.