Hillary and Bill Clinton |
Seems like Hillary Clinton has made the same powerful enemy for her next run for the White House as she did first time around.
America’s most influential columnist Maureen Dowd has lit out after the former First Lady and her hubby following revelations about money issues at the Clinton Foundation.
Remember it was Dowd last time who set off the run on the Clinton favor bank when she revealed Hollywood mogul David Geffen was supporting Obama and breaking from the Clintons because he no longer trusted them.
On Sunday she attacked “The Clintons’ neediness, their sense of what they are owed in material terms for their public service, their assumption that they’re entitled to everyone’s money.”
Those revelations were in a New York Times article this week pointing the finger at surrogate Clinton son Doug Band and his private banking and public relations company Teneo which exists side by side with the Clinton Foundation and which appears to have a lot of overlapping clients and customers.
Then there’s a Terry McAuliffe scandal over monies for a green car project, the circus around Huma Abedin taking a salary from a Clinton related company when still working for her at the State Department and so on.
Much of this is no big deal if it was anyone else but the Clintons who have a reputation for mixing up such money matters and looking greedy in the process.
As Dowd notes: “The closer it gets to (Clintons) running the world once more, the more you are reminded of all the things that bugged you the last time around.”
Dowd asks archly “Are we about to put the “For Rent” sign back on the Lincoln Bedroom?”
Dowd writes; “Just when the Clintons are supposed to be floating above it all, on a dignified cloud of do-gooding leading into 2016, pop-pop-pop, little explosions go off everywhere, reminding us of the troubling connections and values they drag around.
She notes the Doug Band Teneo issue and then says “ There’s the continuing grotesque spectacle of Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin. And there’s the sketchy involvement of the Clintons’ most prolific fund-raiser, Terry McAuliffe, and Hillary’s brother Tony Rodham in a venture, GreenTech Automotive; it’s under federal investigation and causing fireworks in Virginia, where McAuliffe is running for governor.”
She notes that Bill originally charged $500,000 to attend the Israeli president Shimon Peres’s 90th birthday.
Dowd says “many Israelis were disgusted to learn” that Bill Clinton was charging his old friend.
Dowd notes “You never hear about problems with Jimmy Carter’s foundation; he just quietly goes around the world eradicating Guinea worm disease.”
“We are supposed to believe that every dollar given to a Clinton is a dollar that improves the world. But is it? Clintonworld is a galaxy where personal enrichment and political advancement blend seamlessly, and where a cast of jarringly familiar characters pad their pockets every which way to Sunday.”
Dowd notes that “ Bill Clinton earned $17 million last year giving speeches, including one to a Lagos company for $700,000. Hillary gets $200,000 a speech.”
But there are clearly a lot of entitled people around the Clinton folks who want more and more.
That is part of the problem of the Clintons being around the scene so long there are so many entitled advisors who feel they too need to benefit not just politically but financially too from the connection.
It seems like the good ship Hillary 2016 is suddenly encountering some rough weather. The good news for them comes that it has happened early enough in the cycle to change course.
The bad news is that Maureen Dowd is once again shaping up as an adversary.
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