Excerpts of Hillary Clinton’s remarks during paid speeches to Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, and other groups were leaked online Friday afternoon by WikiLeaks. Clinton, who was paid upwards of $225,000 per speech, earned more than $22 million on the paid speaking circuit after resigning as secretary of state.


The wealth Clinton accumulated was a topic at the paid events.

Discussing middle class economic anxieties, Clinton told a crowd at a Goldman Sachs-sponsored speech that she is now “kind of far removed because the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy, but I haven’t forgotten it.”

But the discussions were also an opportunity for Clinton to speak candidly about policy, politics, and her approach to governing.






The issue was raised again during the Democratic primary debates and in other media events. In February of this year, the New York Times editorial board called for Clinton to release her speech transcripts, declaring that voters “have every right to know what Mrs. Clinton told these groups.”

According to reports, the campaign reviewed the speech transcripts but decided against releasing them out of fear that she would appear too friendly to banks and other donor interest groups.

But there are signs in the emails released by WikiLeaks that she also took a fairly progressive stance on certain topics, including health care reform.

During a talk in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2013, Clinton praised the single-payer model for health care reform. “If you look at the single-payer systems, like Scandinavia, Canada, and elsewhere, they can get costs down because, you know, although their care, according to statistics, overall is as good or better on primary care,” she said, adding that there were some drawbacks. “They do impose things like waiting times, you know.”

But during the campaign this year, she dismissed the idea, declaring that single payer will “never, ever” happen in the U.S. Audio obtained by The Intercept last week showed Clinton dismissing the concept of free health care during another private event with donors.