Posted on 06/25/2014 4:39:21 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
DENVER — Team Clinton is doing damage control on a series of comments by Hillary Clinton about the former first couple’s wealth.
Former President Bill Clinton on Tuesday defended his wife as “not out of touch,” and lashed out at the criticism during an appearance at the Clinton Global Initiative America conference.
With Hillary and Chelsea Clinton looking on from the audience of a hotel ballroom, he explained that Hillary Clinton’s comment two weeks ago that the couple was “dead broke” when they left the White House was “factually true.”
He also criticized reporters for not including context in stories about the former first lady’s discussion of her work to help the less fortunate during her career, previewing a message Clinton supporters say the couple needs to harp on in the weeks and months ahead.
In response to questions from NBC’s David Gregory, Bill Clinton said his wife had once offered legal assistance to people who couldn’t afford it and fought for paid leave for pregnant mothers in the 1970s. He also said that he and the former secretary of State go to their local grocery store on the weekends and talk to “people in our town.”
“We know what’s going on,” the former president said.
Several longtime Clinton allies said they weren’t sure his comments would end the criticism, which came on the heels of several stumbles in which Hillary Clinton tried to explain away her finances.
The comments have left even some allies of the Clintons bewildered.
“I don’t want to acknowledge that it’s been a problem, but it’s been a problem,” said one former Clinton aide who maintains ties with those in the former New York senator’s inner circle.
The former aide said Hillary Clinton needs to refine her message on the issue, particularly in the months ahead when she will campaign for Democrats in the midterm elections.
“It’s tricky for someone to be promoting a memoir, where they need to be talking about themselves, but talk about other people instead,” the former Clinton staffer said. “But she needs to use these opportunities to tell stories about the people she’s met. She needs to say, ‘When I was here I met X and she did Y and that’s led to Z,’ which has framed her policy thinking. She needs to ground the conversation.”
Hillary Clinton made the “dead broke” comment during her first interview to promote her book Hard Choices. The remark, to ABC’s Diane Sawyer, overshadowed the opening days of her book tour.
And this past weekend, Clinton inadvertently highlighted her finances again when she told The Guardian that “unlike the truly well off,” she and the former president “pay ordinary income tax,” and their wealth only came “through dint of hard work.”
The comments have provided an opening for Republicans to criticize Clinton ahead of a possible 2016 run for the White House.
“The Clintons still feel the need to feign that they are still in touch with the struggles of regular Americans,” said Tim Miller, the communications director for America Rising. “He laments being the president with the ‘lowest net worth’ which is akin to saying his floors are made of the cheapest marble. Then he goes on to say that they talk with people in their town. They live in one of the most elite, moneyed towns in America.
“The Clintons have lived in a 1 percent bubble for so long, their experience has become warped, and that’s a major problem in a presidential campaign,” Miller added. The couple’s home is in Chappaqua, N.Y.
As the book tour winds down, supporters of the couple say Hillary Clinton has to speak more about her foundation work — on women’s and girls’ issues — and her work as a senator, when she devoted much of her time working on issues in upstate New York.
“She’s gotta tell stories,” the former aide continued. “It’s a skill to answer a question about yourself by talking about someone else. And she’s got to find a way to incorporate some of that. It shouldn’t be an add-on. It should be the central thing she’s doing. “
Bill Clinton on Tuesday tried to hammer home his wife’s long-running work on behalf of the working class.
He said Americans don’t “resent somebody else doing well. They resent that they’re not getting a fair deal.”
“You just have to be transparent and tell the truth,” he said.
Another former longtime Clinton aide who also still advises Hillaryland from time to time, said that the No. 1 thing the Clinton camp can do is “don’t panic.”
“A lot of this stuff comes and goes and some things stick and other things don’t,” the former aide said. “I don’t see it being a long-term personal problem because in a personal sense she’s not disconnected to everyday people. It actually very much defines who she is.”
The former adviser said the comparisons to former GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney are different because “people didn’t know him that well.”
“That narrative was part of their introduction to him,” the adviser said.
Put some ice on it.
Fourteen years after this David Horowitz piece on Hillary Clinton first ran, it is still spot-on accurate and cuts through the Clinton’s phoney veneer like paint stripper.
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=24376
Hillary Clinton and “The Third Way” How America’s First Lady of the Left Has Bamboozled Liberals and Conservatives Alike
***He said Americans don’t “resent somebody else doing well. They resent that they’re not getting a fair deal.”***
Americans yes, Hilary, no. She resents the hell out of somebody else doing better than her. Thus her desire to distance herself from the “truly well off”.
She’s just not getting a fair deal. </s
Hey...cut Hillary some slack...she’s evolving...she now donates NEW underwear to charity, and doesn’t even itemize it on her taxes anymore..
What the clinton’s are attempting to do is explain why they stole so much out of the People’s White House. Won’t work bill and hilly.
Old Hill’s really been stepping on her foreskin lately...
Did she work hard? Oh, no she dint!
Chappaqua, NY demographics from city-data:
Estimated median household income in 2011: $99,198 (it was $163,201 in 2000)
Mean prices in 2011: All housing units: $912,491; Detached houses: $967,074; Townhouses or other attached units: $461,790; In 2-unit structures: $526,864; In 3-to-4-unit structures: $234,919; In 5-or-more-unit structures: $319,530
White alone - 1,084 (75.5%)
Asian alone - 180 (12.5%)
Hispanic - 112 (7.8%)
Two or more races - 31 (2.2%)
Black alone - 28 (1.9%)
Other race alone - 1 (0.07%)
http://www.city-data.com/city/Chappaqua-New-York.html
“He also said that he and the former secretary of State go to their local grocery store on the weekends and talk to “people in our town.”
Median household income in Chappaqua in 2009: $201,493
Read more: http://www.city-data.com/income/income-Chappaqua-New-York.html#ixzz35ehgQyJa
Yep, the Clintons live in a town that is a pure cross-section of the average American life.
Yeah, the news media always goes after the Clintons. < /sarc>
How do a couple who are dead broke buy a $10 million dollar mansion on 20 acres in one of the most prestigious zip codes in America?
Hillary Clinton is not “out of touch”....SHE’S A SNOB! That should be the talking point.
I’ve noticed over the years, that people who say they don’t care about money usually have tons of money themselves.
Certainly applies to those grifters known as the Clintons.
After I read that I had to break out a new keyboard. Take my word for it, keyboards don't like to be spewed with coffee.
FMCDH(BITS)
Let us all remember this is the same couple that STOLE silver out of the Whitehouse on their way out.
AND
Who also took a deduction for donating his underwear to charity. But Hillary says they pay their taxes unlike the 1%ers.
One other little note of Record. ...
The reason “we were broke when we left the whitehouse” was because he was FINED by a federal judge something like 85k for intentionally misleading a Federal Court during a civil suit. He also paid off Paula Jones to the tune of something like 200k.
Be sure to remind all of those facts when the Clintons cry poverty!
In the Hamptons, the Clintons are the poor people in the town.
They probably talk to the "people in our town" to shake them down for money.
They actually talk to the “little people”.
I wouldn’t say Chappaqua NY is where the little people live.
I heard it was Her Parents that made the statement about Chelsea money attitude
Hillary’s taped conversation about getting a convicted child rapist a light sentence and laughing about the 12 year old girls plight, needs to be high lighted too.
Hillary is scum through and through.
Bill and Hillary Clinton are using perfectly legal, but complex and expensive legal strategies available only to the rich in order to avoid the estate taxes they have assured us are essential to fairness and economic justice. So much for the crusade against the 1% who are supposedly responsible for all the ills of everyone else.
Keeping Chelsea a wealthy member of the 1% is the apparent goal. Richard Rubin of Bloomberg report: Bill and Hillary Clinton have long supported an estate tax to prevent the U.S. from being dominated by inherited wealth. That doesn’t mean they want to pay it.
To reduce the tax pinch, the Clintons are using financial planning strategies befitting the top 1 percent of U.S. households in wealth. These moves, common among multimillionaires, will help shield some of their estate from the tax that now tops out at 40 percent of assets upon death.
The Clintons created residence trusts in 2010 and shifted ownership of their New York house into them in 2011, according to federal financial disclosures and local property records. (snip)
“The estate tax has been historically part of our very fundamental belief that we should have a meritocracy,” Hillary Clinton said at a December 2007 appearance with billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who supports estate taxes and is using charitable donations to reduce his eventual bill. (Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
There is no “damage” control needed for the Clintoids; the “damaged” American voters are already in control and in the bag for HRC.
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