Thursday on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” host Chris Matthews said, it’s the Clintons’ “pattern” to raise money “hand over fist” using the White House like a “Motel 6” and that will not change if Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton wins in November.
Huffington Post editorial director Howard Fineman said, “I’ve been covering the Clintons since they were in Little Rock. and when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas, and through all of his presidential campaigns and Hillary’s entire career, their whole life is built on the combination of public office and money. And the Clintons didn’t have any money. They didn’t start out with any money. They’re not like the Bush family or some other people… or the Trump family. And they’re down there in Little Rock, and they want to play on the national stage, and it quickly becomes apparent to them that they’ve got to get in on the money action.”
He continued, “It’s not about campaigning, but it’s about — maybe I’m being too generous here, but they spent their whole lives trying to get contributions from rich people. They’ve immersed themselves in that, going back to Renaissance weekend and that networking by the sea back in the ’80s and ’90s. The big donors, the soft money donors, these are the people they spent their lives around, they want to be like those people. They want to have money like those people, because it’s demeaning to do that all the time on that level. So they want to get the cash for themselves. More important, they’re going to get the cash for campaign contributions, for PAC contributions, for the foundation—that makes the Clintons feel good, like they’re doing good in the world. It’s like a continuously moving carousel of access and money. None of it specifically illegal, but if you look at the totality of it, it looks like they’ve spent their whole lives searching for cash, and using power to get it, to get more money, to get more power, to get more money. And they have not said they’re going to shut down The Clinton Foundation if Hillary becomes president. What they’ve said is, they will no longer take any foreign donations.”
Matthews ended the segment by saying, “You know what I think? I’m going to be more judgmental than Beth who’s a straight reporter. I’ll make a judgment. Every time I watch a politician engage in a certain pattern of behavior before they go to the White House, they continue to engage in that pattern afterwards. People don’t change because we swear them into the White House. They become that person big-time. And the Clintons were raising money like this hand over hand, hand over fist, back in 1996, using—we called it Motel 6. They were hoarding them in, pulling them in by train loads of contributors and then letting them sit in the Lincoln bedroom for a while and charging them by the hour. You can still vote for Hillary Clinton, but remember, you’re getting this as part of the package, because that’s been their pattern.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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