Democrat Former Governor: No ‘Firewall’ Between State Department and Clinton Foundation
At least one prominent Democrat agrees Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has a serious trust issue in light of recent revelations regarding the alleged pay-for-play relationship between the U.S. State Department and Clinton Foundation donors.
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell initially defended the former secretary of state in his interview with Philadelphia talk radio host Rich Zeoli on 1210-AM WPHT. He said that while “it doesn’t look good,” he didn’t believe there’s a “major problem” unless “there’s a connection.”
“It’s like Bernie Sanders during the primaries, remember he kept saying, ‘You gave all those speeches for Goldman Sachs and all these other people and you didn’t do it for nothing, you know, you did it,'” he said. “And Hillary Clinton said to him in one of the debates, she said, ‘Senator, find me one incident where I did something for someone who gave me money for giving a speech that was improper.’ And of course he couldn’t. And he didn’t.”
But when Zeoli pressed the issue, arguing that newly released emails show there was “no firewall” between Clinton Foundation and State Department employees, Rendell agreed. He said he didn’t know if Clinton lied about the setup, but acknowledged any firewall that existed “was pretty ineffective.”
“But look, the bottom line is, what they did, I wouldn’t have done, it creates a bad perception,” he said, using one of the new buzzwords the Clinton campaign has had its surrogates using in the media—”perception”—in its efforts to downplay the scandal. “But will it hurt her? It’s obviously not gonna help.”
