Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton seemed unprepared to answer a question on the hundreds of thousands of dollars she has received in paid speeches, the majority from Wall Street firms, despite this being a constant line of attack from rival Sen. Bernard Sanders.
“Look, I’ve made speeches to lot of groups, I’ve told them what I thought, I answered questions,” Mrs. Clinton said of the three speeches she made to Goldman Sachs for $675,000. She made the comments during a Democratic Town Hall event aired by CNN on Wednesday.
When asked by moderator Anderson Cooper whether the amount paid for the speeches was excessive, Mrs. Clinton replied: “Well, I don’t know, that’s what they offered. Every secretary of state that I know has done that.”
Mr. Cooper pressed Mrs. Clinton on the fact that none of those other secretaries are now running to become president.
“To be honest, I wasn’t committed to be running, I didn’t know whether I would or not,” Mrs. Clinton replied.
Mrs. Clinton challenged voters to “name one thing” on which Wall Street money has influenced her.
“I’m out here every day saying I’m going to shut them down, I’m going after them, I’m going to jail them if they should be jailed, I’m going to break them up,” Mrs. Clinton said. “I mean they’re not giving me very much money now, I can tell you that much. Fine with me, I’m proud to have 90 percent of my donations from small donors.”
The super PAC supporting Mrs. Clinton — another point of contrast Mr. Sanders constantly makes because he has no super PAC — collected $15 million of the $25 million it raised in the second half of the year from Wall Street sources, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Nearly half of those funds came from billionaire investor George Soros.
• Kelly Riddell can be reached at kriddell@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.