During MSNBC’s Super Tuesday coverage, host Mika Brzezinski grilled New York City Mayor, and Clinton supporter, Bill De Blasio on why Clinton isn’t releasing the transcripts of the speeches she made to big banks and Wall Street behind closed doors. Oh, and she got a nice payday from it too.
Of course, De Blasio deployed countermeasures, saying it’s more pertinent to focus on the reforms she’s pushing for the nation’s financial institution, which was undercut by Brzezinski saying that doesn’t this add yet another instance in which the Clinton’s avoided being transparent and look as if they have something to hide. De Blasio said he doesn’t care about the speeches; only what’s in her platform to reform Wall Street.
Even the New York Times editorial board said that Clinton should cough up the speeches on February 25:
“Everybody does it,” is an excuse expected from a mischievous child, not a presidential candidate. But that is Hillary Clinton’s latest defense for making closed-door, richly paid speeches to big banks, which many middle-class Americans still blame for their economic pain, and then refusing to release the transcripts.A televised town hall on Tuesday was at least the fourth candidate forum in which Mrs. Clinton was asked about those speeches. Again, she gave a terrible answer, saying that she would release transcripts “if everybody does it, and that includes the Republicans.”
[…]
In a debate with Bernie Sanders on Feb. 4, Mrs. Clinton was asked if she would release transcripts, and she said she would “look into it.” Later in February, asked in a CNN town hall forum why she accepted $675,000 for speeches to Goldman Sachs, she got annoyed, shrugged, and said, “That’s what they offered,” adding that “every secretary of state that I know has done that.”
At another town hall, on Feb. 18, a man in the audience pleaded, “Please, just release those transcripts so that we know exactly where you stand.” Mrs. Clinton had told him, “I am happy to release anything I have when everybody else does the same, because every other candidate in this race has given speeches to private groups.”
On Tuesday, Mrs. Clinton further complained, “Why is there one standard for me, and not for everybody else?”
[…]
Public interest in these speeches is legitimate, and it is the public — not the candidate — who decides how much disclosure is enough. By stonewalling on these transcripts Mrs. Clinton plays into the hands of those who say she’s not trustworthy and makes her own rules. Most important, she is damaging her credibility among Democrats who are begging her to show them that she’d run an accountable and transparent White House.
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Indeed she is doing that:
Hey, Clinton turned over her private email server to the FBI, maybe she'll release those transcripts...the day after she's sworn in as president.
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