Excerpts from several of Hillary Clinton’s paid speeches seem to have been released in a WikiLeaks dump of hacked emails from campaign chairman John Podesta. The speeches in question were the subject of controversy during the primaries after she refused to release their transcripts, arguing that her opponents should be required to do the same.
The excerpts were first reported by BuzzFeed News’ Ruby Cramer and appear to contain several undesirable statements like, “you need both a public and a private position” (referring to the intricacies of government), but nothing that is immediately outrageous.
In one speech, she discussed her comfortable middle class upbringing, saying:
“My father loved to complain about big business and big government, but we had a solid middle class upbringing. We had good public schools. We had accessible health care. We had our little, you know, one-family house that, you know, he saved up his money, didn’t believe in mortgages… Now, obviously, I’m kind of far removed because of the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy, but I haven’t forgotten it.”
She also spoke about whether or not the game is rigged:
“Even if it may not be 100 percent true, if the perception is that somehow the game is rigged, that should be a problem for all of us, and we have to be willing to make that absolutely clear. And if there are issues, if there’s wrongdoing, people have to be held accountable and we have to try to deter future bad behavior, because the public trust is at the core of both a free market economy and a democracy.”
And about how behind the government was when it came to technology:
“I mean, let’s face it, our government is woefully, woefully behind in all of its policies that affect the use of technology. When I got to the State Department, it was still against the rules to let most — or let all Foreign Service Officers have access to a Blackberry. You couldn’t have desktop computers when Colin Powell was there. Everything that you are taking advantage of, inventing and using, is still a generation or two behind when it comes to our government.”
Read BuzzFeed’s report here and the WikiLeaks email here, conveniently for SEO purposes labeled “HRC Paid Speeches.”
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