(Photo: iStockPhoto; Wikimedia Commons; Taylor Le/Pacific Standard)
Donald Trump has just knocked Hillary Clinton over her paid Goldman Sachs speeches. This comes two days after WikiLeaks released excerpts from the closed-door paid speeches.
BuzzFeed’s Ruby Cramerreports that the transcripts deal mostly with Clinton’s views on trade, health care, and Wall Street. They also make open acknowledgment of her own life of privilege (“I’m kind of far removed because the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy”).
Whether or not the transcripts really contain anything that damaging (they don’t), they underscore the tightrope act Clinton must walk, between her own neoliberal base and a banking industry that’s been quite generous to her over the years.
As Jared Keller wrote for Pacific Standard:
The eventual victory of Clinton … would offer a relatively safe respite from the political backlash to the disparate economic gains made under President Obama’s administration. And this sense of predictability, an econometric certainty that analysts love, is bought and paid for by Wall Street; business interests have donated some $654.7 million already this cycle, far more than any other individual or PAC affiliation. Goldman Sachs alone has already forked over some $4.7 million in donations to both Republicans and Democrats this election cycle, while Clinton herself received a total of $675,000 from the investment bank for three speeches. The same day Blankfein aired his anxiety on Squawk Box, Clinton reminded the country who she reallyworks for: When asked of her speaking fees at the Democratic Town Hall on Wednesday, Clinton responded with “that’s what they offered.” No wonder Wall Street loves Clinton.
Maybe Clinton doesn’t love Wall Street per se, but she at least knows how to give it a good pat on the back.
