[caption id=”attachment_92671″ align=”aligncenter” width=”843″] Hillary Clinton guffaws on “The Daily Show.” (Via screengrab)
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In case you are still worried about Hillary Clinton’s financial problems, Bloomberg reported Monday that she has made at least $12 million since leaving the State Department 16 months ago. The vast majority of this money has come from her memoir, speeches and paid appearances.
This number represents the minimum amount of money that Clinton has made and does not take into account other forms of income, such as investments. Bloomberg conducted interviews with organizations that hired her to speak, as well as literary agents, news reports and public documents to evaluate Clinton’s earnings.
“Her earnings represent a fraction of the Clinton family’s total income and yet were large enough to rank her not only in the top 1 percent of the nation’s earners but in the top one-hundredth of the 1 percent,” Bloomberg reported.
The media fascination over the Clinton’s wealth came after Hillary’s now infamous “dead broke” comments. She has tried to defend herself by spinning the comment into something heroic in almost every interview since.
Recently, Clinton came under fire after her $200,000 speaking fee was exposed. The students at universities paying this fee were rightfully upset when they realized what their tuition was going toward.
“All of the fees have been donated to the Clinton Foundation for it to continue its life-changing and life-saving work,” Clinton said in an interview with ABC News. “So it goes from a foundation at a university to another foundation.”
Clinton’s defense can’t cover up the hypocrisy of fighting for shrinking the gap between the rich and the poor. The cottage industry nature of the Clintons income furthers question of whether Hillary would prioritize the average working American if she were to ever become president, a contrast her opponents are highlighting ahead of a possible 2016 run.
“The Clintons did not start a company that created growth or jobs,” Tim Miller, the executive director of a political action committee founded by Romney campaign veterans, told Bloomberg. “What they did to make money was put a ‘For Sale’ sign on themselves.”
