Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) said Friday that he would vote for Hillary Clinton in November, although he still would not officially drop out of the presidential race.
MSNBC's Morning Joe fill-in host Nicolle Wallace asked Sanders straight-up if he would vote for Clinton, who he has battled for more than a year in a contentious Democratic primary.
"Yes," he said. "I think the issue right here is I'm going to do everything I can to defeat Donald Trump. I think Trump, in so many ways, will be a disaster for this country if he were to be elected president."
Sanders called bigotry "the cornerstone" of Trump's campaign.
Clinton clinched the nomination earlier this month, but Sanders had said constantly he would fight all the way to the Democratic National Convention and attempt to flip "superdelegates" to his side. However, he conceded Friday that any pathway to the nomination was closed for him.
"I'm pretty good at arithmetic, and what I know is that Hillary Clinton has more pledged delegates than I do and she has a lot more superdelegates than I do," Sanders said. "But what I also know is we're bringing 1,900 delegates into the convention, that we have received 13 million votes ... We are going to be urging millions of people to get involved in the political process."
Co-host Willie Geist asked why Sanders would not just withdraw from the race.
"Why would I want to do that when I want to fight to make sure that we have the best platform that we possibly can, that we win the most delegates that we can," Sanders said. "The goal of our campaign was to transform this nation."