Hillary Clinton’s campaign is channeling the ghost of failed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, according to some in the news media.
NBC News’ “Today” on Thursday aired a video package by Andrea Mitchell on Hillary’s “Romney problem.” In the segment, Mitchell noted that Hillary, a Democratic presidential candidate, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, made $25 million in speaking fees in 2014. “With the election still more than a year away, Hillary Clinton is trying to avoid making her wealth a liability, like Mitt Romney in 2012,” Mitchell said.
Chuck Todd, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” also compared Hillary’s wealth to Romney’s, who in the 2012 election was successfully painted by President Obama’s campaign as an excessively rich and out-of-touch plutocrat.
“That’s what’s going on right now with the Clintons, ” Todd said at the end of Mitchell’s segment. “All of a sudden, they’re the wealthiest candidate running for president — Hillary Clinton is.”
News emerged this week that Bill Clinton used a previously undisclosed LLC to receive payments for various services, although the exact nature of his work and the amount of money he earned through it is unknown.
Washington Post blogger Chris Cillizza on Wednesday said the news put Hillary in the same position Romney was in during the 2012 election.
“[W]hether or not she is Romney 2.0, the reality is that the amount of money coming into the Clinton coffers ($25 million from speaking fees alone since the start of 2014) coupled with this…LLC — not to mention the regularly revised donor policies of the Clinton Foundation — badly complicates her pitch that she is able to understand regular folks,” Cillizza wrote.
