WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton offered such “glowing” remarks about Goldman Sachs in one of her paid speeches that she sounded like one of the firm’s managing directors, it was reported Monday.
A source who saw the speech said that’s why she won’t release a transcript of the remarks.
“It would bury her against (Bernie) Sanders,” said the source. “It really makes her look like an ally of the firm.”
The Vermont senator has been hitting Clinton hard for taking money from the investment firm, claiming the company’s “greed and illegal behavior brought this economy to its knees.”
Clinton was paid $675,000 in 2013 for three speeches at Goldman events after she left office as secretary of state: June 4 in Palmetto Bluff, SC, Oct. 24 in New York City and Oct. 29 in Tucson, Ariz.
A person who attended the Arizona speech said the Democratic front-runner praised Goldman for hiring women and offered no criticism of the company for the 2008 financial crisis.
“It was pretty glowing about us,” the source told Politico. “It’s so far from what she sounds like as a candidate now. It was like a rah-rah speech. She sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director.”
Under pressure from Sanders for being too cozy with Wall Street, Clinton said she has no intention of releasing the transcripts until her opponents do the same.
She described the talks as “really boring.”
“I’m getting a little bit weary of the double standard,” Clinton said on MSNBC Monday night. “Let’s release what everybody’s ever said. There are a lot of people on both sides. … What’s good for the gander should be good for the goose.”
A separate attendee at Clinton’s New York speech said the former New York senator argued it wasn’t just the banks that caused the financial crisis.
“It was mostly basic stuff, small talk, chit-chat,” that person recalled. “But in this environment, it could be made to look really bad.”
Trailing Sanders in New Hampshire, Clinton has pushed back on his “artful smear” that she’s been bought by Wall Street and has challenged anyone to point to a position she’s changed.
Clinton has insisted that her Wall Street plan will “go a lot further” then Sanders’ to rein in banks.
“I have the toughest, most effective campaign plan to take on the entire financial industry,” Clinton told CNN on Sunday.