What Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus calls former Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s “fake and phony” populism apparently knows no bounds.
In Iowa this week — in her first event as a presidential candidate — Clinton hammered CEOs.
“There’s something wrong when CEOs make 300 times more than the typical worker. There’s something wrong when American workers keep getting more productive, as they have, and as I just saw a few minutes ago is very possible because of education and skills training, but that productivity is not matched in their paychecks,” Clinton said in Monticello, Iowa, at a roundtable at Kirkwood Community College.
She didn’t stop there, however. A moment later, she took that criticism of CEOs a step further to attack “hedge fund managers.” But she didn’t mention that her very own son-in-law is one of those hedge fund managers.
“And there’s something wrong when hedge fund managers pay lower tax rates than nurses or the truckers that I saw on I-80 as I was driving here over the last two days,” Clinton said. “And there’s something wrong when students and their families have to go deeply into debt to be able to get the education and skills they need in order to make the best of their own lives.”
Her comments were widely covered by the Pro-Clinton mainstream media, but hardly any mentioned that Clinton herself—and her family—are part of the elitist world she criticizes on the campaign trail.
Marc Mezvinsky is a hedge fund manager for Eaglevale Partners, LP—although he may not be a very skilled one. Mezvinsky married Chelsea Clinton, Bill and Hillary’s daughter, in 2010.
“The hedge fund co-founded by Bill and Hillary Clinton’s son-in-law suffered losses tied to an ill-timed bet on Greece’s economic recovery, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal,” WSJ’s Rob Copeland wrote in early February:
Eaglevale Partners LP, founded by Marc Mezvinsky and two former colleagues from Goldman Sachs Group Inc., told investors in a letter sent last week they had been ‘incorrect’ on Greece, helping produce losses for the firm’s main fund during two of the past three years, according to the letter. Mr. Mezvinsky married Chelsea Clinton, the former first daughter, in 2010. The main fund dropped 3.6% last year, far trailing the 5.7% rise for similar hedge funds tracked by HFR Inc. That followed an Eaglevale gain of 2.06% in 2013 and a loss of 1.96% in 2012, the documents show. It returned 6.24% this January, helped by bets on the U.S. dollar, said a person familiar with the situation, putting it in positive territory since its inception in 2012.
Copeland added that Mezvinsky’s Eaglevale is a “relatively small player in the hedge-fund world” and handles about $400 million “pursuing a so-called macro strategy that looks to profit from global macroeconomic trends.”
Hillary Clinton’s spokesman Nick Merrill has not responded to a Breitbart News inquiry about the 2016 Democratic front-running candidate’s hedge fund comments, and whether they apply to all hedge fund managers — including her son-in-law — or just to some hedge fund managers.
The theme of “fake and phony” populism by Clinton as she launches her 2016 presidential bid was highlighted in a recent interview Priebus did with Breitbart News.
“It’s all about stagecraft. It’s all fake and phony,” Priebus said. “She’s used to private jets, not vans and she doesn’t drive the van—Secret Service does. She’s not used to dealing with ordinary Americans. It’s all going to come out, slowly but surely.”
Clinton has been avoiding press and publicity in her first week as a presidential candidate—and in fact, in one instance, reporters actually sprinted, chasing her “Scooby” bus around a building on live television—all part of what Priebus said is “hiding” to avoid answering real questions from reporters and voters about her various scandals, including the Clinton Foundation, her private email address as Secretary of State and her role in Benghazi.