Hillary Clinton delivered a speech to Goldman Sachs executives in 2013 that led at least one attendee to observe that her speech was so "glowing" that she resembled an employee of the company. Clinton was paid $225,000 for the speech.
Politico reported:
"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."
At another speech to Goldman and its big asset management clients in New York in 2013, Clinton spoke about how it wasn’t just the banks that caused the financial crisis and that it was worth looking at the landmark 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law to see what was working and what wasn’t.
"It was mostly basic stuff, small talk, chit-chat," one person who attended that speech said. "But in this environment, it could be made to look really bad."
Clinton’s presidential campaign spokesman Brian Fallon regarded the descriptions of the speeches as "pure trolling."
Clinton has received scrutiny for delivering paid speeches following her tenure as secretary of state, and particularly for the three that she delivered to Goldman Sachs for $675,000. When questioned about the steep price tag for the speaking engagements during a Democratic town hall in New Hampshire last week, Clinton responded, "That’s what they offered."
Clinton made $9 million alone from speeches paid for by banks, insurance companies, hedge funds, private equity firms, and real estate companies, according to the Associated Press.
Clinton has been pressed to released the transcripts of her speeches to Goldman Sachs for the sake of transparency. During the Democratic primary debate last week, Clinton claimed that she would "look into it."
"I don’t know the status, but I will certainly look into it," Clinton said. "But I can only repeat what is the fact, that I spoke to a lot of different groups with a lot of different constituents ... about issues that had to do with world affairs."
According to several of Clinton’s paid speech contracts obtained by McClatchy, Clinton herself required a stenographer to transcribe the speeches for her own records.
Clinton’s competitor for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.), has been particularly critical about her ties to Wall Street. Clinton and Sanders will face off in the first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire Tuesday, where Sanders maintains a sizable lead.