Hillary Clinton has long had a close relationship with Wall Street and wasn't always so ashamed to admit it.
During a speech given at the NASDAQ stock exchange when she was campaigning for president in 2007, Clinton greeted her "wonderful donors" on Wall Street that were in the audience.
"I would be in small groups with my supporters and a lot of my wonderful donors, some of whom are here today," said Clinton during the speech.
Clinton referenced this 2007 speech before the 2012 campaign as an example of her being tough on Wall Street, but no recording of the speech was available until this weekend when ProPublica posted a full video of the Dec. 7, 2007, speech.
Revealed in the recording is that Clinton has been greatly overstating how tough she was on Wall Street during the speech. During the October debate, Clinton characterized her message during the speech as "Cut it out! Quit foreclosing on homes! Quit engaging in these kinds of speculative behaviors."
A review by Politico found that this was far from what she actually said to her "wonderful donors."
A review of that 28-minute talk at an office of the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York shows Clinton steered a middle ground. She presented a detailed analysis of the burgeoning dangers in the housing market and its threat to the economy.
Clinton gave a shout-out to her "wonderful donors" in the audience, and asked the bankers to voluntarily suspend foreclosures and freeze interest rates on adjustable subprime mortgages. She praised Wall Street for its role in creating the nation’s wealth, then added that "too many American families are not sharing" in that prosperity.
She said the brewing economic troubles weren’t mainly the fault of banks, "not by a long shot," but added they needed to shoulder responsibility for their role. While there was plenty of blame to go around for the spate of reckless lending, and while Wall Street may not have created the foreclosure crisis, it "certainly had a hand in making it worse" and "needs to help us solve it."
Now, Clinton is being forced to defend herself from opponents in the Democratic presidential primary for the large amount of money that she has received from Wall Street.
"Why, over her political career has Wall Street been a major—the major campaign contributor to Hillary Clinton? You know, maybe they're dumb and they don't know what they're going to get, but I don't think so," said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) during Saturday's debate.
She didn't do a very good job on that defense. She is currently being ripped apart in the media for her attempt to explain her Wall Street ties by invoking the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. She is even taking heat from the New York Times editorial board for the response.