Politics

CNN: Clinton Foreign Fundraising ‘Damaging,’ Akin To Selling Lincoln Bedroom [VIDEO]

Al Weaver Reporter
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News revolving around the Clintons continues to circulate as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gears up for a 2016 run at the White House.

This week, news emerged that the Clinton Foundation started re-collecting donations from foreign governments. The practice was put on hold during her tenure at the State Department.

Host John King and his panel on CNN’s “Inside Politics” Sunday roundly took shots at the practice by the presumptive 2016 Democratic nominee.

“Why is it the Clintons have this blind spot when it comes to money?” King asked Washington Post chief correspondent Dan Balz. “They don’t need the money from the United Arab Emirates, from Saudi Arabia. The Clinton Foundation is doing just fine.”

“The Clintons have been raising money for 25 years and they never stop,” Balz said. “There is always a new bucket to raise money for. I think many people were shocked to see that they were back raising from foreign governments. They’ve tried to maintain this idea that she is a private citizen, she’s not in government, she’s not a candidate. But she is the closest thing that the Democrats have to a lock on the nomination, and every step she takes is seen not as a private citizen doing work but as a politician.”

“They just seem to think that she’s in such a formidable position that this is not going to change the mind of anybody whose vote she needs,” King said. “Yes, it may harden the people who already don’t like her, say ‘I don’t like Hillary Clinton.’ Is that a fair assessment, that they just seem to think it’s a media story, not a voter story?”

“There are two words we have to say in this conversation: Lincoln bedroom,” Bloomberg Politics reporter Lisa Lerer said. “This plays exactly into the existing narrative that you were talking about of the Clintons, that they just want to collect cash. It’s damaging. When you combine that with all the paid speeches she’s been doing and the series of reports over the summer about how much money she was collecting for those speeches. It helps further this Republican line of attack.”

“Clinton doesn’t have a rival out there making these points about the foundation. When is an ambitious Democrat going to get into this race, whether it’s Governor O’Malley, Senator [Jim] Webb, Senator [Bernie] Sanders and really start going after the Clintons?” asked Robert Costa of the Washington Post. “We’ve seen a Democratic Party mostly united around the Clintons and not questioning these activities.”