Republicans were "dumbfounded" by Trump's rise and could not stop him, in part, Hillary Clinton suggested, because they largely agreed with him on matters of policy. | AP Photo Clinton: I know how to punch back at Trump

Hillary Clinton dismissed Donald Trump's now-vanquished GOP rivals as ill-prepared to take on the bullying real estate mogul. Clinton said she won't make the same mistake.

"Oh, absolutely. But I'm not running against him," Clinton told CNN's Anderson Cooper in a live interview Wednesday from her Chappaqua, New York, home, when asked whether she knows how to run against him. "I'm running my own campaign. I'm running to become president, to really deal with the economy, get it working again, take on all the barriers that stand in the way of people getting ahead. I have a very clear mission in this campaign."


Republicans were "dumbfounded" by Trump's rise and could not stop him, in part, Clinton suggested, because they largely agreed with him on matters of policy. Asked how "scorched earth" the general election campaign will be, Clinton said that would be up to her opponent.

"You know, he's the one that's making that decision, Anderson. Not me. He's the one who has run the campaign insulting people, demeaning women, degrading people with disabilities, talking about keeping Muslims out of the country. He's the one who has been running that kind of very negative, aggressive bullying campaign," she said. "He could choose to run whatever campaign he wants to run. I'm going to keep staying on the campaign I'm running."

As far as whether Trump could unleash the Clintons' past as a weapon against them, such as their marriage, the former secretary of state shrugged.

"Well, he's not the first one, Anderson. I just can't -- I can't say this often enough. If he wants to go back to the playbook of the 1990s, if he wants to follow in the foot steps of those who have tried to knock me down and take me out of the political arena, I'm more than happy to have him do that.

"You're ready for that," Cooper responded.

Clinton responded, "Oh, please. I mean, look, this -- this is -- this is to me a classic case of a blustering, bullying guy who -- who has knocked out of the way all of the Republicans because they were just dumbfounded. They didn't know how to deal with him and they couldn't take him on on the issues, and they basically agreed with him and they didn't take him on on the issues because they agreed with him and they didn't know how to counterpunch."