The New York Times wants Hillary Clinton to release transcripts of her Wall Street speeches.
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(Newswire.net – February 26, 2016) -Transcripts are surfacing thanks to whistle blowers, concerned citizens, and social transparency, regarding what Mrs. Clinton has said in “closed door” paid speeches.
CNN has reached out to the Clinton campaign for a response to the editorial.
Most recently, Hillary said she would release her transcripts if the Republican candidates did.
“Hillary Clinton gave speeches to the biggest banks on Wall Street after one of the worst financial crises in American history”, the narrator says along with video of someone who resembled Clinton opening a check from Goldman Sachs.
It’s also not that far removed from Greenwich, Connecticut, home to numerous hedge-fund billionaires her opponent in the primary likes to criticize with such force, or from New York City and Wall Street, not too long ago ground zero for the Occupy Movement’s protests against income inequality and corporate greed.
The Times called it “a awful answer”.
“The real question underneath this is OK, if you take money from Wall Street, can you regulate Wall Street?” “Well, Barack Obama took more money from Wall Street than any candidate who has ever run for president, then turned around and passed the Dodd-Frank bill”.
“By refusing to release them all, especially the bank speeches, Mrs. Clinton fuels speculation about why she’s stonewalling”, read the editorial.
Public interest in these speeches is legitimate, and it is the public – not the candidate – who decides how much disclosure is enough. No matter how much she was paid to speak to these groups and to these corporate and financial leaders and other “fat cats”, in all likelihood she, with a few minor deviations here and there to account for who was in the room and what was out there in the global ether, gave pretty much the same speech most every single time. “So before you promise your vote to Hillary, don’t you deserve to know what she promised them?” “That’s what they offered”, Clinton said earlier this month at a CNN town hall about why she charged hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech.
“This is just another instance of Republican Super PACs echoing Bernie Sanders’ personal attacks against Hillary Clinton”, said Brian Fallon, Clinton’s press secretary. Her relationship with big banks and the transcripts could prove to be her Achilles’ heel.
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“I am happy to release all of my paid speeches to Wall Street – here it is”, Sanders said on Thursday, with a wave of his hands. “They paid her over one million dollars and are contributing millions more to elect her”.
