Once you agreed to open yourself up for this docuseries, what was your biggest concern?

I don't know that I really understood what I was getting into. We ended up doing 35 hours of interviews, and it was both exhilarating and obviously painful at some points. It was probably made easier because of the rapport with [Burstein], and it gave me a chance to try to explain things and maybe to vent a bit.

In the doc, you're brutally honest on Sanders: "He was in Congress for years. He had one senator support him. Nobody likes him, nobody wants to work with him, he got nothing done. He was a career politician. It's all just baloney and I feel so bad that people got sucked into it." That assessment still hold?

Yes, it does.

If he gets the nomination, will you endorse and campaign for him?

I'm not going to go there yet. We're still in a very vigorous primary season. I will say, however, that it's not only him, it's the culture around him. It's his leadership team. It's his prominent supporters. It's his online Bernie Bros and their relentless attacks on lots of his competitors, particularly the women. And I really hope people are paying attention to that because it should be worrisome that he has permitted this culture — not only permitted, [he] seems to really be very much supporting it. And I don't think we want to go down that road again where you campaign by insult and attack and maybe you try to get some distance from it, but you either don't know what your campaign and supporters are doing or you're just giving them a wink and you want them to go after Kamala [Harris] or after Elizabeth [Warren]. I think that that's a pattern that people should take into account when they make their decisions.

Speaking of, he allegedly told Sen. Elizabeth Warren in 2018 that he didn't think a woman could win, a statement he vigorously denies. How did you digest that?

Well, number one, I think [that sentiment] is untrue, which we should all say loudly. I mean, I did get more votes both in the primary, by about 4 million, and in the general election, by about 3 million. I think that both the press and the public have to really hold everybody running accountable for what they say and what their campaign says and does. That's particularly true with what's going on right now with the Bernie campaign having gone after Elizabeth with a very personal attack on her. Then this argument about whether or not or when he did or didn't say that a woman couldn't be elected, it's part of a pattern. If it were a one-off, you might say, "OK, fine." But he said I was unqualified. I had a lot more experience than he did, and got a lot more done than he had, but that was his attack on me. I just think people need to pay attention because we want, hopefully, to elect a president who's going to try to bring us together, and not either turn a blind eye, or actually reward the kind of insulting, attacking, demeaning, degrading behavior that we've seen from this current administration.

Any advice to Warren or Sen. Amy Klobuchar if either wins the nomination?

I've talked to them.

What have you said?

I answer their questions, number one. I've talked to practically everybody who had run and is still running.

Assume Bernie's not part of that?

(Nods.) So, I can't say all of them. But I answer their questions. I always say [to the female candidates], "Look, you can run the best campaign, but you're going to have to be even better than your best campaign to overcome some of the unfairness that will be directed at you as a woman." Whoever gets the nomination, you've got to deal with the structural challenges that the Republicans and their allies have put in your way. So, that means you've got to deal with voter suppression, because they'll steal votes or they'll prevent votes from happening. They're now trying to purge voters so that they can try to limit the electorate. You've got to deal with the theft of your personal information, particularly your emails. I say to them, "If your emails haven't been stolen yet, they will be." Look what the Russians just did, hacking into that Ukrainian oil company to try to dig up something or make something up [about Joe Biden's son, Hunter]. Then you've got to worry about the propaganda, the fake news, the made-up stories. Now you have the additional worry of the deepfakes, and people putting words in your mouth. I've tried to tell all the candidates the same thing, but with the women, I say, "You're probably not going to be treated fairly, don't let it knock you off stride."