Hill’s Goldman Handshakes

‘Iwill look into it”: So answered Hillary Clinton at last week’s debate when asked yet again to release the transcripts of her lucrative speeches for Goldman Sachs. She couldn’t come up with a better dodge than that?

Maybe not: Clinton can’t seem to give any straight answers on her Goldman windfall.

The night before, she practically broke down when CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked why she accepted $675,000 in fees for three Goldman speeches. After a struggle, she answered, “Well, I don’t know. That’s what they offered. Every secretary of state has done that,” she said. Not quite. “That’s what they offered”? By all accounts, Clinton’s staff had a clear schedule of fees. One campus group that asked for a discount on her sixfigure demand was told, roughly, That’s the college rate.

Over the last 16 months, Clinton raked in at least $30 million — chiefly, The New York Times reports, from closedtothepress speeches to corporations, banks, etc.

Care to bet on any other exsecretary of state being so “lucky”?

Interest in just what Clinton could deliver in exchange for such largesse has prompted many requests over the last year for transcripts. She is consistently refused.

For the record, we doubt it’s anything too shocking. Most likely, she just doesn’t want to be outed as having been kissykissy with the likes of Goldman chief Lloyd Blankfein. Why give a gift to Bernie Sanders when he has already tied her in the polls?

Clinton can’t admit that, of course — but she should have expected the question to pop up at the debate.

Yet when MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asked her pointblank to release the transcripts, she acted as if the idea was too outlandish to have ever crossed her mind: “I will look into it. I don’t know the status, but I will certainly look into it.”

“Don’t know the status”? She might as well have said the dog ate her homework. Plus, her nonanswer guarantees the question will now come up daily.

It speaks volumes about Clinton’s weakness as a candidate that she didn’t have answers ready long ago for such obvious and damning questions.

Of course, you can tell she has no clue how ordinary people think by the fact that she happily cashed all those checks in the first place.