During the Democratic presidential debate Thursday evening, MSNBC moderator Chuck Todd picked a question offered by a viewer and pointedly asked Hillary Clinton if she would release the transcripts of her paid speeches to giant investment bank Goldman Sachs. Todd then broadened the question, asking: “Are you willing to release the transcripts of all your paid speeches?”
It was the second time Clinton has been asked if she would release transcripts of the paid speeches she gave behind closed doors. When I asked her in Manchester, New Hampshire, two weeks ago, Clinton simply laughed and turned away.
Asked this time on network television, she said, “I will look into it. I don’t know the status, but I will certainly look into it.”
Watch the video below:
Clinton went on to say that she made money from paid speeches by talking “about issues that had to do with world affairs,” suggesting she gave a boilerplate talk. But according to accounts offered by several attendees of one of the Goldman Sachs speeches, Clinton reassured the crowd, telling them that banker-bashing was unproductive and foolish.
Clinton made $675,000 for three paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, a bank that is notorious for hiring former lawmakers and using its influence in government to win access to policymakers. In total, Clinton and her husband have made over $125 million on the paid speaking circuit since 2001.
Todd noted that “there were transcription services for all of those paid speeches.”
Related:
- Hillary Clinton Laughs When Asked if She Will Release Transcripts of Her Goldman Sachs Speeches
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- Top Hillary Clinton PAC Donation Amounts to 222,000 Bernie Sanders Donations
- Elizabeth Warren Challenges Clinton, Sanders to Prosecute Corporate Crime Better Than Obama
- Hillary Clinton Made More in 12 Speeches to Big Banks Than Most of Us Earn in a Lifetime
I never had any visceral response to Secretary Clinton before this election. She has managed to move me from being neutral to cringing every time she speaks. How anyone can believe a word that comes out of her mouth is beyond me. No politician has ever been more about the money than Secretary Clinton. I haven’t missed voting in any elections since 1976 and I usually vote Democratic. If Secretary Clinton manages to steal the nomination then I will may sit this one out or actually vote for that guy with a boot for a hat, because she is the epitome of everything that is wrong with our government. Sanders is the first candidate I’ve actually been excited about in decades. Hillary and Bill need to go back to suckling at Wall Street’s teat until the gates are closed under a Sanders administration.
I don’t get why Sanders isn’t pushing this issue harder. No matter which way Clinton turns on this its a win for Sanders. I get it if he prefers not to blatantly go on the attack, but it doesn’t really seem that demanding transparency regarding these speeches would be fairly characterized in that manner. An ad using that video where Hillary laughs when asked by a reporter if she would release these transcripts would be Bernie’s golden ticket to the White House.
perhaps we can buy the transcripts ?
she seems to love a dollar !
Re Hillary’s fierce denials re her speeches to Wall Street Banks -to paraphrase – “Me t hinketh that she doth protestet too much” I would be very surprised were she to agree to the FULL content being made public. It is just common sense – that no organisation pays huge fees for a speech if they are not expecting to get their backs stroked!
I’m guessing her “look into it” can be measured in microseconds.
If she doesn’t then forget her for 2016
Hillary’s proclaimed herself the only candidate willing to defend President Obama’s legacy. Presumably she means she wants to protect the insurance and pharmaceutical giveaway that’s the Affordable Care Act, and not necessarily the expanded drone murder or the increased domestic surveillance, but that’d be a sucker’s bet.
Maybe some “blogger,” (AP) – fuck them, could trip her up on this assertion – by asking about her stance on the many states now legalizing recreational marijuana and industrial hemp production. She’s hinted she’d again unleash the war on drugs.
Great appearances on Democracy Now this week, Lee, dig the tie. I wore one for decades.
https://theintercept.com/2016/02/05/heres-what-clintons-paid-speaking-contract-looks-like/?comments=1#comments
This is a delaying tactic, while her team work like busy beavers to produce a sanitized “sample” version of one of her speeches. You watch: before long, she’ll “bow to the inevitable” to “silence the critics” and “graciously provide the text of one of said speeches”… and it will have every reference that the public would get furious over (i.e. Mitt Romney’s 47% of the people gaffe) stripped out of it.
I’d much prefer to see a video taken of one of those speeches when she didn’t know she was being recorded… but alas, she seems to have done a more through job than Romney did of preventing that from happening. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that attendees (and any staff or service people) had to surrender their cellphones at the door.
They are out there all you need to do is take the time to look them up…. All of her speeches have been available to the public… http://hillaryspeeches.com/speech-archive/
I would think there would be other avenues to get the transcripts since they are speeches given to companies. Shareholders etc. might be able to get the transcripts so they can see what the company is paying for.
Daughter follows in her mother’s foot steps!! Also makes some unusual demands ( or rather the FOUNDATION ) with some censorship!
“A college balks at Hillary Clinton’s fee, books Chelsea for $65,000 instead”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-college-balks-at-hillary-clintons-fee-so-books-chelsea-for-65000-instead/2015/06/29/b1918e42-1e78-11e5-84d5-eb37ee8eaa61_story.html
AND, Mrs Clinton wants women to vote for her to be the first woman president!!!! Demanding exorbitant amount of money at the opening of
“Women’s Hall of Fame” just does not cut it..
Releasing those speeches is just to witch hunt. If she must release them, all candidates should have to, so witch hunting is fair and universal. It’s wrong to only attack Hillary for that.
In addition your actual complaint rumor, that it is unproductive to beat up on banks, is really, really feeble. Is that the best you can do?
I totally agree, all of the democratic candidates should absolutely release the transcripts for any speaking fees they received from corporations in excess of $100k/hour.
Oh… wait… Bernie doesn’t put himself in situations like that where his integrity can be called into question.
No but Bernie chose not to run as an independent so that he could keep his Senate chairs if he loses. He knows he’ll be flogged all the way back to Vermont if he causes Hillary to lose by way of an Independent Party run. I support Bernie totally but you people should get off your high horses. It’s pathetic really. If Bernie can’t win without this being an issue, he doesn’t deserve the job. No laws were broken and all you people have is your assumptions and aspersions. You have nothing.
This isn’t Bernie’s issue. He will win on other, more important issues. Clinton could make it all go away tomorrow: simply release the transcripts and demonstrate there is nothing in her words to bankers which casts doubt on her words to voters. If she is suited for presidency, there won’t be problem.
Wealth inequality and control of DC by Big Banksters is a real issue. What Hillary told Big Banksters for exorbitant fees is relevant. I’ll decide for myself what issues are legit.
P.S. Remember when “appearance of conflict of interest” was enough to raise ethical red flags? Now Hillary wants direct proof linking every dollar to a promise. Hillary knows the game is played through lobbyists.
No matter how you slice it, how can a discerning mind not find it hard to trust Hilary’s expensive mouthpiece. And as far as the foreign policy superiority complex. How many elected presidents are elected on the basis of being foreign policy experts? The one’s that do the fear mongering always claim to be experts. You know, be afraid, I will protect you from all the boogie men. But we all know every president get advisors and uses information to exercise judgment. Based on their track records, I’d rather have Bernie’s judgment over all the over candidates in both parties.
OK, I am sure were she to release them, they’d be heavily redacted – perhaps even classified!
Wait, but if they were classified they’d be released and not redacted?
Exactly! Because they relate to . . . wait, let me think . . . NATIONAL SECURITY! Like, um, the emails she kept on her server!!
I also think it’s not so much “what’s in the transcript” but rather “what’s not”. IOW’s, the speaking fee had absolutely nothing to do with what she said but instead a way to legitimize a bribe.
You hit the nail on the head. The content of the speech doesn’t matter. Speaking fees are a racket to move money from rich companies to powerful politicians.
Say, ask Mitt Romney whether the contents of such speeches matter.
Or, ask the poor and middle class voters pillaged by Wall Street.
Exactly. Clinton wasn’t paid to talk. She was paid to listen.
Bringing up OBL unneccessarily shows desperation.
Either way, this shows Hillary is dishonest. Goldman Sachs is a business. When they give out half a million dollars, they are expecting to get something for their money. It is hard to believe that GS thinks what they are getting is to have all of their top producers take some time off and listen to Hillary blather on about foreign policy! That strains credulity. If Hillary wasn’t giving them anything, not one little thing worth a dime, like an appointment to be Secretary of Treasury, she was deceiving them. If Hillary was giving them something, she is deceiving the public when she fails to admit to her corruption. So the only question for her is, how could she take the money when, either way, it required her to be dishonest? Of course, this is the question for most politicians….
Phony missing transcripts scandal coming up. “She won’t release the transcripts! What is she hiding? She’s not trustworthy!”
Transparency? Yes, this is a transparent attempt by the political media to invent a controversy, since conflict is what drives eyeballs and ad dollars their way and Benghazi, the emails, etc. have run out of steam. Beating up Hillary is sexist garbage, and it’s disappointing to see The Intercept participate.
Yeah. Poor, poor Hillary. All those sexists beating her up. Kinda like that guy – you know, what’s his name? Oh – Bill Clinton. Yeah. Kinda like him beating up his victims, and his wife trying to ruin them.
Hillary was the generator of tons of fake conflict all over last night’s debate. Every “low blow” and “artful smear” that Sanders supposedly landed was Hillary pretending to be on offense when she was on defense.
Yes, Hillary has been unfairly pummeled by the GOP her entire career. Benghazi was literally about nothing. But it doesn’t make her a good candidate. It doesn’t make every argument against her presidency “sexist”.
This specific argument is about her ties to a corrupt financial and political system.
The truth is, if her speeches to Golman were milquetoast, it would still prove that the speech racket is only about rich companies paying off powerful people by working around campaign finance laws.
Not really – being paid that amount of money for a speech is a LOT of money. It is more than what some people will earn in years. Therefore, it is only natural for people to want to know exactly what she said in that speech.
If I am trying to win an election and I say that when I get in power, I will rein in Wall Street, yet I have made millions by giving speeches to Wall Street, it would only be natural for people to want to know what I said in those speeches.
Oh, BTW, using the “sexism” card is abhorrent – there is very real sexism that women face, but when you label legitimate criticism as sexism, you’re just helping the sexists.
It’s not sexist to ask why a politician who claims to be “fighting for ordinary people” would take huge sums of money from an organization which destroyed the lives of so many ordinary people while growing richer in the process. To take that much money and expect not to be questioned about it shows a lack of judgement.
7 million people lost their homes.
Even if somehow Clinton is so pure that her opinions and policies cannot be influenced by campaign donations (an absurd idea that Sanders wonderfully dismantled last night) – even if this were the case, it would still be in very poor taste to take money from the biggest players in an industry-wide crisis that blew up the global economy, used the United States government as a lending house and then skirted any major responsibility for the many instances of open fraud and deceit they participated in.
Her funding her campaign and lining her personal pockets with funds from this kind of industry (never mind pharmaceuticals and private prisons) – it’s just really unwise for her to gamble with the appearance of her affiliation with some highly unpopular and morally bankrupt industries – especially in the run up and in the midst of a national election.
The progressive movement has been decrying this kind of thing for a long time now and the criticisms have spanned party lines as well as gender of the politicians. The perception of being influenced by dirty money is troubling to a lot of people because folks who actively participate in democracy have an expectation of their elected officials representing their interests rather than the interests of industries that do real harm to everyday people.
Believe it or not, it is actually possible to criticize a woman without it being automatically “sexist”.
I must have missed it somehow. Would you be kind enough to point out evidence of sexism?
The content of the speeches is irrelevant. The ridiculous fees is just a legal way to transact large sums of money to a politician. Its a legal bribe, like many others that lobbyists come up with. Also, stop embarrassing yourself with assertions that anyone who questions or ridicules Hillary is a sexist. Hillary does not get special amnesty or treatment than any other politician and people like you preaching a message that claims she should are ironically the actual sexists.
Missing transcripts scandal coming up.
Article’s photo fits well with the story. Good work el capitan.
Hillary’s (and Washington’s) real message
is the obscene, over-sized, tight pearl necklace
That’s a real Wilma Flintstone. Those pearls are huge. They have to like, 10 or 11 millimeter pearls? Wonder if they are real.
Good that HRC couldn’t laugh off the question this time.
Hillary doesn’t know the “status” of her words!
Is it because she isn’t sure who owns her words?
Is it because the meanings of her words sort of
disintegrate over time?
Is it that the value of her words is subject to the fluctuations
of her fortunes?
Why is “status” so important?
I’m not saying that her concern over the “status” of her words
makes her any different than most of what passes for
leadership in the democrat, republican, or libertarian
game-playing, but I’ve never heard of such a concept.
Perhaps she had to sign an NDA as part of the deal with Goldman. If I were her, that’s what I’d claim.
If I recall correctly, the contract typically stipulates that HRC owns all of the rights to all of the speech transcripts. If correct, that claim wouldn’t fly.
I dream of a debate moderated by mr Fang and nor the msnbc sycophants
Dang! That was painful to listen to! She was shook up by that question and immediately went for a rehearsed response that she had used to defend her self in Iowa. She stumbled and stumbled badly. Excellent question and she did not have the right answer. Wow!
Regarding rehearsal: I remember reading or hearing that the Clinton’s rehearsed regularly and in brutal fashion for public encounters. I’m sure they all rehearse for political theater. The tale was they even rehearsed with Chelsea at a young age to the point she would cry. Not sure if that report is true or if my memory is bad.
A cynical side of me thinks the theater is so well rehearsed and understood by those engaged in it that afterwards Hilliary and Bernie high fived ea other back stage, had a good laugh at the expense of plebes and fools, then both went to snort a few lines and have a couple o drinks together.. recalling the good ole days of fighting the man
I don’t understand why people will vote for Hillary! Can someone point out anything she has achieved? I know she voted for the Iraq War, supported the bombing of Libya, and arming “moderate rebels” in Syria. Thankfully all those actions have been a great success!
That is an impressive response in that it both doesn’t answer the question and, at the same time, proves the core point of what the question is getting at.
The “almost definite maybe” response makes her look pretty pathetic.
Throwing in a terrorism reference AGAIN, and then trying to change the subject makes her look really pathetic.
Excellent work putting this question out there Lee.
Keep it up.