Why she would prefer not to

Hillary Clinton pays some political price for refusing to produce the transcripts of her absurdly lucrative paid speeches to the titans of Wall Street. The transcripts must be full of the innocuous boilerplate with which Clinton lards every speech, but in this case the boilerplate would reflect her warm relationship with Wall Street and other such multipurpose donors.

On Sunday Clinton formulated her refusal to produce the transcripts of her paid speeches this way:

Let everybody who’s ever given a speech to any private group under any circumstances release them. We’ll all release them at the same time. You know, I don’t mind being the subject in Republican debates, the subject in the Democratic primary. That kind of goes with the territory … At some point, these rules need to apply to everybody.

She actually said: “At some point, these rules need to apply to everybody.” We’re not clear to whom she is referring, but that’s the least of it. When it comes to the Clintons, everybody knows that rules are for the little people. Her statement inadvertently reminds us of the Clintonian modus operandi.

Clinton’s judgment at this point must be that the content of the speeches would exact a higher price than withholding them. That by itself should deepen the curiosity of interested onlookers.

Now Politico’s Ben White takes a look at what Clinton said in her paid speeches. White’s piece opens:

When Hillary Clinton spoke to Goldman Sachs executives and technology titans at a summit in Arizona in October of 2013, she spoke glowingly of the work the bank was doing raising capital and helping create jobs, according to people who saw her remarks.

Clinton, who received $225,000 for her appearance, praised the diversity of Goldman’s workforce and the prominent roles played by women at the blue chip investment bank and other tech firms present at the event. She spent no time criticizing Goldman or Wall Street more broadly for its role in the 2008 financial crisis.
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“It was pretty glowing about us,” one person who watched the event said. “It’s so far from what she sounds like as a candidate now. It was like a rah-rah speech. She sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director.”

White’s report includes this characteristic nonresponse from the fallacious Brian Fallon speaking on behalf of the Clinton campaign. Fallon dismissed the recollections as “pure trolling.” White adds that the Clinton campaign declined to comment further on calls for her to release the transcripts of the three paid speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs, for which she earned a total of $675,000.

Whole thing here.

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