It seems that Chelsea Clinton, daughter of Hillary and Bill, is beginning to enter the family business of charging enormous amounts of money for speaking appearances, reported CBS News.
Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was slated to speak at the University of Missouri at Kansas City. The university balked at the fee of $275,000, so Hillary recommended that Chelsea make the one-hour long speech for a more “reasonable” $65,000.
The Clintons have faced much criticism over their extravagantly high speaking fees, sometimes asking for up to $300,000 per appearance. Collectively, Bill and Hillary Clinton earned over $25 million in speaking fees from January 2014 to May 2015. The Clintons insist the money goes to philanthropic efforts via the Clinton Foundation, which has raised a total of $2 billion over its lifetime.
Despite claims that the Clinton Foundation is geared towards charity, the Washington Post reported a “substantial overlap” between politics and the foundation. Is it possible that the Clinton Foundation is also a political smokescreen of sorts? Even though Clinton officials say that the foundation is strictly philanthropic, many of its donors are from Wall Street.
Despite the money’s actual destination, be it politics or charity, Clinton knows where it came from and surely owes a few favors for it.
According to the Washington Post:
[T]he foundation provided another way for the Clintons’ longtime political donors to support the family’s endeavors between election campaigns. The analysis relied on a list of bundlers compiled by the advocacy group Public Citizen using campaign disclosures and news reports. Each donor had generally raised at least $100,000 for her 2008 campaign.
Whether it be Bill, Hillary, or Chelsea, the Clintons are a corporate brand. They are a commodity for sale to anyone willing to pay the price. In this instance, Chelsea is just the discount Clinton.
