After her embarrassing loss in November, Terry McAuliffe, a longtime Clinton flack and the current Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, is now saying Hillary Clinton and hubby Bill are finally done with politics.
“I think so, sure. I don’t think Hillary has any interest in running again,” McAuliffe said during an “ask the governor” interview on WTOP, according to the Washington Post.
McAuliffe, who was a major Clinton fundraiser for years and also once served as the Chairman of the Democrat National Committee during the Bush era, said that the past campaign was devastating for the Clintons.
“I mean, this is hard on anybody… can you imagine having to go through this?” he said. “I’ve had many conversations with the Clinton family. We’re friends. It’s hard, very tough. I think on Election Day everybody felt pretty good. I think the Trump campaign thought they were gonna lose. And you know, this is what happens in elections.”
The Virginia Governor did backtrack a bit, though, saying, “I’ll let her speak for herself. I haven’t asked her that. I think the president’s [Bill Clinton] probably going to go back, working on all the good deeds he’s done before in helping people around the globe. You know, there are elections. We’ve got to move forward. As governor of Virginia, I’ve got to move forward.”
The Clintons may, however, find it harder than they think if they expect to carry on, business as usual, with their Clinton Foundation efforts. Already two major world governments announced that they are going to begin eliminating the multi-million dollar donations they were making to Bill and Hillary.
Just this week Australia noted that it will be ending its 10-year habit of donating to the Clinton Foundation after giving away over $88 million in Aussie tax dollars to the Clintons.
But Australia wasn’t even the first nation to make such an announcement. Norway also moved to cut off the Clintons.
According to the Aftenposten, a Norwegian newspaper, the government there has already begun the process of cutting off funding for the Clinton Foundation after having donated hundreds of millions of Norwegian tax dollars to the Clintons since their organization was founded in 2001. In 2015, the paper said, Norway gave a whopping $174 million to the Foundation, but for 2016 that sum was slashed to $23 million. That is an 87 percent cut in funding. And don’t be surprised if this is cut even more for 2017.
It is expected that other governments will follow suit and funding for the Clinton Foundation will soon dry up.
And who can blame them? The Clinton Foundation is seen by many as little else but “a slush fund,” is still under investigation by the FBI, and was criticized for wasting more than $50 million on travel alone.
Even while lauding President-Elect Trump, noting that Trump gave him a campaign donation, and saying he was looking forward to working with him as the Governor of Virginia, McAuliffe still said he’d have preferred a different outcome on November 8.
“Would I much prefer to have President Clinton and Vice President Tim Kaine from Virginia? Of course,” McAuliffe said. “But it is what it is,” he added.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.