“This is the Associated Press report that both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have now responded to that 85, Hillary Clinton, when she was secretary of state, met with 85 major donors to the Clinton Foundation. They gave something like in total $156 million to the foundation. How is that not paying for access?” host Alisyn Camerota asked Begala.
“How is it?” Begala said.
“They paid money and they got to meet with the secretary of state,” Camerota said.
“And who were they and what did they get? This really infuriates me,” Begala said.
Begala repeatedly talked over Camerota in the interview.
He even made the claim that the Clinton Foundation “keeps millions of people alive.”
The London Daily Mail said Clinton’s campaign “went into spin mode Wednesday, calling the AP’s report an exercise in ‘cherry-picking.'”
“Chief strategist Joel Benenson said the Associated Press report was ‘cherry-picking’ Clinton’s long-hidden schedules from her time as secretary of state,” the report said. “Campaign manager Robby Mook used the exact same word to describe the blockbuster article that dominated Tuesday afternoon’s news cycle.”
Trump campaign policy director Stephen said in an email: “Secretary Clinton, you claim the AP report is an incomplete accounting of your meetings. Why don’t you clear up any problems with the AP report by releasing all of your schedules from while you were in charge of the State Department?”
Trump’s opinion?
“It is a total embarrassment if our secretary of state can be bought or bribed or sold.”
The International Business Times also presented some interesting points.
“In May, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Clinton Foundation ‘set up a financial commitment that benefited a for-profit company part-owned by people with ties to the Clintons.'”
The benefit was $812,000, but the Journal noted, “Under federal law, tax-exempt charitable organizations aren’t supposed to act in anyone’s private interest but instead in the public interest.”
And it reported in 2010, Clinton “pushed Russia to approve a $3.7 billion purchase from Boeing.”
“Two months after the deal was solidified, reported the [Washington Post], Boeing announced a $900,000 contribution to the Clinton Foundation.
“A 2015 analysis by Vox found that ‘at least 181 companies, individuals, and foreign governments that have given to the Clinton Foundation also lobbied the State Department when Hillary Clinton ran the place.’ IBT reported that Bill Clinton was paid more than $2.5 million by firms that were lobbying Hillary Clinton’s department.”
The report also has details on a coal deal involving Morocco, Algeria and Colombia.
The result, the IBT said, was a “new political firestorm.”
David Horsey at the Los Angeles Times wrote of the foundation and its donors, “No doubt good intentions were involved, but, at least for some donors, there was also an interest in getting access to a former president of the Untied States and a possible future president – and at least a secretary of state.”
He continued: “In politics donations buy access. Senators and members of Congress spend an obscene share of their days in office begging for campaign contributions and then many more hours hosting those contributors in private meetings. A secretary of state should be above that. Even though Clinton, herself, did not solicit donations, her husband did and, especially when the money came from foreign powers, that raises concerns both about ethics and foreign policy.
“Appearances are important, even if intentions are pure.”