Hillary gets tripped up again when asked questions about her wealth

Via Post Politics:

Hillary Rodham Clinton defended scrutiny on her and her husband’s personal wealth by contrasting herself in an interview published Sunday with other multimillionaires who are “truly well off.”

The comment immediately drew scorn from Republicans, who have highlighted a series of stumbles the former secretary of state and potential 2016 Democratic presidential candidate has made on her book tour this month when talking about her personal fortune and six-figure speaking fees.

In an interview with Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Clinton was asked whether she could be a credible champion for fighting income inequality in the United States despite her wealth.

“But they don’t see me as part of the problem,” she told the paper, “because we pay ordinary income tax, unlike a lot of people who are truly well off, not to name names; and we’ve done it through dint of hard work.” The Guardian wrote that Clinton let off “another burst of laughter” in answering the question, suggesting that she found the question “painful.”

Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, have earned well over $100 million giving paid speeches and writing books since leaving the White House in 2001.

[…]

Still, mentioning that she pays taxes as a defense of her wealth is striking considering that Bloomberg News reported last week that the Clintons use “financial planning strategies befitting the top 1 percent of U.S. households in wealth” to shield some of their wealth from standard estate taxes.

Hillary Clinton’s speaking fee is $200,000 or more – and although the advance for her latest book, “Hard Choices,” has not been released, she received an $8 million advance for her first memoir, “Living History.”

Like I wrote in my previous post on this issue, I have no quarrel with the Clintons making a lot of money.  And wanting to keep as much of it as possible. I do, however, take offense to her acting like she’s not “truly well off”, saying one thing and doing something different when it comes to their taxes, and suggesting that in the past – after their time in the White House – that she and the former President were “dead broke” when she knows good and danged well they weren’t.  

This is a lame attempt by her as trying to come off as just an ordinary “woman of the people”, and she’s failing miserably.  She should be relieved that this is happening so early on before the 2016 campaign really gets ramped up, because most people are likely to forget what she said.  That is, unless the Republican contenders for President see fit to remind the American people again (hint hint) ….