Jazz Shaw:
It’s getting difficult to keep up with all of the revelations from the latest batch of leaked emails from the Clinton team, but another item of interest has popped onto the radar. During a speech to the Global Business Travelers Association in 2013 (after leaving the State Department) Hillary Clinton had some interesting thoughts to share about both terrorism and Russia. While a subject of concern to be sure, Clinton didn’t want anyone to lose too much sleep over it because neither really represented “a threat” to the United States. The RNC dredged out some of the goodies for us this time.
” CLINTON: “But make no mistake, as the recent travel alert underscores, we still face terrorism. It’s not a threat to us as a nation. It is not going to endanger our economy or our society, but it is a real threat. It is a danger to our citizens here at home, and as we tragically saw in Boston, and to those living, working, and traveling abroad.”
The speech earned her $225K and the fact that she gave the address is confirmed in her tax returns. You can see the excerpts as part of the Wikileaks release.
But Clinton wasn’t just downplaying the threat of terrorism. She also wasn’t much impressed with Vladimir Putin as any sort of danger to us. In fact, she found Vlad to be “engaging” and a “very interesting conversationalist.” This one came from a speech given in New York earlier that same year to a private group, for which she was paid another $225K by Sanford C. Bernstein.
CLINTON: “I last saw [Putin] in Vladivostok where I represented President Obama in September for the Asia Pacific economic community. I sat next to him. He’s an engaging and, you know, very interesting conversationalist. We talked about a lot of issues that were not the hot-button issues between us, you know, his view on missile defense, which we think is misplaced because, you know, we don’t believe that there will be a threat from Russia, but we think that both Russia and the United States are going to face threats from their perimeter, either from rogue states like Iran or from terrorist groups, that’s not the way he sees it.”
So Putin has some misplaced views on things like missile defense, but you know… there won’t be a threat from Russia. Other than that he’s a swell fellow and a real hoot to chat with.