In public, Hillary Clinton’s position is to take on Wall Street. In private, Hillary Clinton’s position is to take the money and power and praise Wall Street. This is what you can gather from the latest batches of documents released by non-profit government transparency organization WikiLeaks.
Clinton’s speeches to Wall Street were the subject of steep controversy during the Democratic primaries. Her opponent, Bernie Sanders, demanded that she release them. The former Secretary of State turned those requests down and continued to accuse him of sexism.
Just what happened between Clinton and Wall Street? What did she tell them? What did the Clinton campaign think? Well, here are five takeaways from the latest WikiLeaks batch:
The Clinton Campaign was Afraid of Her One Speech
In 2014, Clinton told Deutsche Bank that they had to address the common perception that the financial system “rigged” the United States economy.
“I think that’s a message worth recalling today when so many hardworking American families, and I add European families feel like they’re falling further and further behind, while they see, in their view, the playing field becoming more unlevel, and feeling as though it doesn’t matter how hard they work because the game is rigged against them,” Clinton told the Deutsche Bank executives.
“So even if it may not be 100 percent true, if the perception is that somehow the game is rigged, that should be a problem for all of us, and we have to be willing to make that absolutely clear. And if there are issues, if there’s wrongdoing, people have to be held accountable and we have to try to deter future bad behavior, because the public trust is at the core of both a free market economy and a democracy.”
One email showed that the campaign actually wanted to leak this email to one media outlet to show to the general public that Clinton will be tough on Wall Street. However, others thought it would actually do more harm to her public image.
Mandy Grunwald, senior communications adviser to the Clinton team, thought that it wouldn’t work because her speech would be “described as saying people shouldn’t be vilifying Wall Street.”
Goldman Sachs Paid Clinton $225,000 for Praise
During an October 2013 symposium hosted by Goldman Sachs, Clinton was paid $225,000 to praise Wall Street and expressed sympathy in the wake of the economic collapse.
“We need banking. I mean, right now, there are so many places in our country where the banks are not doing what they need to do because they’re scared of regulations, they’re scared of the other shoe dropping,” Clinton said.
“[When] everybody in the press is saying it’s all the fault of Wall Street, you can’t sit idly by and do nothing.”
$225,000 for saying you do “really important work”? That sounds great. Sign us up!
Is it any wonder that Goldman Sachs has donated nearly $1 million to the Clinton campaign (SEE: Wall Street hedge funds love Hillary Clinton much more than Donald Trump)?
Hillary Clinton Didn’t Like Speech Canceled
In 2015, Bill Clinton was scheduled to deliver a paid speech at Morgan Stanley. The speech was later canceled, which had enraged his wife so much that she actually “needed a cool down period.”
Apparently, she didn’t want him to cancel the speech, according to her right-hand man Huma Abedin, who wrote in an email, “HRC is reiterating her original position. She does not want him to cancel.”
It’s clear that she was upset because that meant giving up between $200,000 and $400,000 for a speech.
Here are two excerpts from the emails:
A ‘Covert’ Syrian Intervention
If you want to get a taste of Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy as the next U.S. president then here is something for you. Clinton actually wanted the U.S. government to intervene in Syria “as covertly as possible.”
“We used to be much better at this than we are now,” she said. “Now, you know, everybody can’t help themselves. They have to go out and tell their friendly reporters and somebody else: look what we’re doing and I want credit for it.”
Yikes. If a Clinton administration created a red line then she would actually follow through with the threat.
Of course, the Clinton campaign is completely ignoring her remarks. Instead, as usual, they are blaming Russia and Vladimir Putin.
“There is no getting around it: Donald Trump is cheering on a Russian attempt to influence our election through a crime reminiscent of Watergate, but on a more massive scale,” said Clinton spokesman Glen Caplin.
Sigh…
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