Bernie Sanders in New York. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders essentially threw his support behind the party's presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton, on Friday morning.

On MSNBC's "Morning Joe," when asked whether he would be voting for Clinton in the November presidential election, Sanders replied, "Yes."

Sanders appears to have made the announcement as a show of Democratic unity against presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

"The issue right here is, I'm going to do everything I can to defeat Donald Trump," Sanders said. "I think Trump, in so many ways, will be a disaster for this country if he were to be elected president."

He continued: "We do not need a president whose cornerstone of his campaign is bigotry, is insulting Mexicans and Latinos and Muslims and women, who does not believe in the reality of climate change when virtually every scientist who has studied this issue understands we have a global crisis."

Sanders said his role through the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia next month would be to "fight for the strongest possible platform" for the party.

Sanders has not yet officially dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. But based on delegate totals from the Democratic primary contests, it's virtually impossible for him to win.

Earlier this week he acknowledged for the first time that he knew he probably would not win the Democratic nomination.

"It doesn't appear that I'm going to be the nominee, so I won't be determining the scope of the convention," he told C-SPAN.

Here's video from Sanders' "Morning Joe" appearance: