Hillary Clinton defended her Wall Street donations by saying that President Barack Obama took historic amounts of money from Wall Street and then “turned around” and passed the Dodd-Frank Act.
Clinton made the statement during a contentious exchange at Tuesday night’s CNN Democratic town hall in Columbia, S.C. She’s trying to fight off Sen. Bernie Sanders’ surge by rallying the black vote, which Clinton is winning.
Clinton refused to release transcripts of speeches she has given to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms until other candidates release their speech transcripts. “Sure, if everybody does it and that includes the Republicans because we know they have given a bunch of speeches. But, look, what is this about?,” Clinton complained.
“Why is there one standard for me and not for everybody else?,” Clinton said.
“The argument seems to be that if you took money” from business then you cannot be impartial in government. But Clinton said that President Obama took a record amount of Wall Street cash “and then he turned around and he pushed through the toughest regulations.”
“I went to Wall Street before the Great Recession. I called them out,” she said.
But as Breitbart News reported, Clinton actually pointed blame at poor people who took out mortgages they couldn’t afford. Clinton’s December 2007 speech at New York City’s NASDAQ stock market was presumably the speech she was referring to in her town hall answer.
“Now these economic problems are certainly not all Wall Street’s fault. Not by a long shot,” Clinton said in the speech (4:45 Mark In Video Below).
“And certainly borrowers share responsibility as well. Home buyers who paid extra fees to avoid documenting their income should have known they were getting in over their heads,” Clinton said. (11:55 Mark In Video).
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