Yes, she took the money — lots of it — for speaking to bankers at Goldman Sachs and elsewhere. And Hillary Clinton’s blasé reasoning for why she took so much banker money sent some of her detractors into apoplectic fits: “That was what they offered,” Clinton explained. But if the Dem brawl in Brooklyn this week gives any clue, then Clinton’s matter-of-fact attitude is justified. She didn’t have to do big calculations about the money she was taking because she wasn’t selling anything.
Bernie Sanders has been pounding Clinton on the campaign trail for the loot she made from the banks in the form of exorbitant speaking fees. (Some put the total at $675,000.) And there’s no doubt that being paid nearly a quarter million dollars for an hour’s talk gives off the stench of impropriety. But in the Brooklyn debate Sanders was asked directly to identify a single instance wherein Clinton’s policy decisions were potentially diluted by the influence of banks that paid her. Sanders came up blank. Clinton said: “He cannot come up with any example because there is no example.”
