Looks like we gave Hillary Clinton too much credit: The problem with her Goldman Sachs speeches isn’t just that she was kissy-kissy with CEO Lloyd Blankfein, as we assumed the other day — but that she was planting wet ones on the bank itself, indeed on the whole industry.
That praise was probably accurate — Wall Street is, after all, vital to the US economy. But it’s a record you don’t want exposed when you’re desperately trying to convince Democratic voters that you’ll be even tougher on the big banks than Bernie Sanders.
To be clear, Clinton still refuses to release the transcripts of her three Goldman speeches. But audience members have been leaking to Politico about what she said.
In one, it seems she used her time to praise the bank — at length. That speech “earned” her a whopping $225,000. (Her total for three gigs: $674,000.)
“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.”
She praised Goldman for raising capital and helping create jobs. Quite right — but, as another attendee noted, making her remarks public would “bury her against Sanders. It really makes her look like an ally of the firm.”
At another Goldman speech, she reportedly explained that the big banks weren’t the only ones to blame for the 2008 crisis — and said the bank-restricting Dodd-Frank law needs review.
True again — but also fodder for Bernie.
The Hillary campaign dismissed Politico’s reporting as “pure trolling” — implying that her Goldman speeches weren’t all about toadying to her hosts after all.
Funny: Saying just what your six-figure paymasters want to hear strikes us as the best way to get invited back for more boodle.
Like Goldilocks finding the perfect porridge, the leaks sound juuust right.
Of course, the campaign has an easy way of showing otherwise: Release the text, and let the voters judge for themselves.