Hillary Clinton is expected to go after Donald Trump’s business record during a campaign speech on Tuesday, part of a broader effort to portray the billionaire real estate mogul as temperamentally unfit for the presidency.
Clinton will presumably be eager to contrast Trump’s record with her own successful career in business, which has been marked by moments of brilliance. For example:
Hillary Clinton made a killing — more than $21 million — on the public speaking circuit after leaving the Obama administration in 2013, often taking home a minimum of $200,000 per hour-long speech.
Clinton’s ruthless devotion to personal enrichment lead her to deny few gigs and accept checks from not only corporate titans and Wall Street banks, but also boringly generic groups such as the Council of Insurance Agents and Brokers ($225,500), the International Deli-Dairy-Bakery Association ($225,500), and the American Camping Association ($260,000).
Clinton even raked in six-figure speaking fees from public universities. In true Trumpian fashion, she refused to return the fees after student protested. Clinton has also rebuffed multiple calls for her to release the transcripts of paid speeches she gave to financial institutions such as Goldman Sachs. Trump would approve.
Even Donald Trump must marvel at the brilliance of a former U.S. president setting up a “charitable” foundation that would accept donations from foreign governments while his wife served as secretary of state.
Not surprisingly, money poured in from Middle Easter dictatorships and other sketchy figures and various oligarchs with business before the state department. In the words of former Clinton operative and Clinton Foundation donor George Stephonopolous, “when those donors give that money… there’s a hope that that’s going to lead to something.” But you’re not allowed to criticize these donations because the foundation is a “charity” that is helping to “save the world.”
As Trump knows, being successful in business is all about adapting, which is exactly what Hillary did when President Obama refused to let her hire her “old friend” Sidney Blumenthal at the state department; she simply got him a plush consulting gig at the Clinton Foundation, where he continued to advise her via his rogue intelligence operation.
Sure, it didn’t turn out as planned, but that’s no reason to leave it off your resume. Hillary’s failed presidential bid in 2008 racked up what is believed to be the largest campaign debt in history, which wasn’t fully repaid until 2013.
A significant portion of that debt was owed to firms run by long-time Clinton confidante Mark Penn, the strategist who suggest that Hillary attack her Democratic opponent Barack Obama for not being “at his center fundamentally American in his thinking and in his values.”
Like Trump, the former secretary of state also has some experience in real estate investment. Around the same time that she began trading cattle future, Hillary, along with her husband Bill, who was running for governor, invested in a 230-acre plot of undeveloped riverfront land in Arkansas that they intended to sell as lots for vacation homes. They formed the Whitewater Development Corporation with local businessman Jim McDougal.
The venture was a total failure. The land was in a poor location and became inundated with flood water. Interest rates were surging at the time, meaning that many were unable to afford vacation homes. Shortly thereafter, McDougal purchase a small savings and loan association and proceed to commit loan fraud to the tune of $3 million. He was eventually convicted of 18 felony counts of fraud and conspiracy charges.
