So, who had the worst week in Washington? Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post said that’ll be former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose book sales are sinking faster than the Titanic (via WaPo):
Then there is the question of just how well Clinton’s book is actually selling. According to Nielsen BookScan, sales of “Hard Choices” this past week dropped by 46 percent from the week prior, which was down 44 percent from the week before that. Seeking to squash the book-isn’t-selling story, Correct the Record, a pro-Clinton outside group, released a memo Wednesday night noting that the book was No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list for the third straight week and blaming the “right wing” for pushing out false information.
Actually, maybe the book tour is a perfect encapsulation of what a Clinton campaign might look like. And for that, Hillary Clinton, you had the worst week in Washington. Congrats, or something.
Cillizza did touch upon the exorbitant speaking fees the former First Lady has been receiving, like the $225,000 she’ll earn when she speaks at the University of Nevada in Las Vegas later this year. But, T. Becket Adams at the Washington Examiner wrote that Mrs. Clinton would be banking an average of $1.8 million for eight speeches over the course of this year.
For example, the University of Connecticut, which recently increased its tuition by 6.5 percent, paid Clinton $251,250 from a donor fund to speak in April, the Post reported.
Meanwhile, the University of California at Los Angeles paid Clinton roughly $300,000 to speak in March, and she is scheduled to deliver a speech in October at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, where tuition will jump by 17 percent over the next for years, at a cost to the school of about $225,000.
She has also delivered paid speeches at the University at Buffalo, Colgate University, Hamilton College in New York, Simmons College in Boston and the University of Miami in Florida.
Of course, Clinton could’ve avoided having the magnifying glass placed upon her wealth if she’d had more finesse detailing life after the White House, where she infamously claimed she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, we’re “dead broke.”