Hillary Clinton Backtracks On ‘Dead Broke’ Claim; Bill And Hill Now Worth $200 Million

Hillary Clinton has sought to clarify her comments that she and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, were “dead broke” and “struggling” to pay two mortgages after they left the White House.

Mrs. Clinton’s book tour — which might be a practice run for a 2016 Democrat presidential campaign — for Hard Choices has developed into an apology tour after at least one major gaffe.

The dead broke comment made during the Diane Sawyer ABC News interview appeared to reveal the multimillionaire former Secretary of State as an elitist who is completely out of touch with ordinary Americans. As The Inquisitr previously reported, the Clintons have been criticized for what some believe are the exorbitant fees they charge for speaking engagements and the million dollar book deals they both secured to tell their stories.

The Clintons left the White House owing huge legal bills arising from the various Clinton scandals. But even Clinton’s natural allies on the liberal MSNBC network assailed her fake populism inherent in the claim about financial difficulties. Mika Brzezinski called it “not just a little tone-deaf” and “contrived” and agreed with another Morning Joe panelist that a Republican cashing in bigtime on Wall Street connections like Hillary Clinton has done, who made a similar statement, would be “eviscerated.”

In a subsequent interview with Robin Roberts on Good Morning America, Hillary Clinton said:

“Let me just clarify that I fully appreciate how hard life is for so many Americans today. It’s an issue that I have worked on and cared on my entire adult life. Bill and I were obviously blessed. We worked hard for everything we got in our lives and we have continued to work hard. And we’ve been blessed in the last 14 years. But I want to use the talents and resources I have to make sure other people get the same chances. So, for me, it’s just a reality what we faced when he got out of the White House, meant we had to keep working really hard. We always have, that’s who we are. We’re grateful that we can do that, but I worry a lot about people that I know personally and people in our country that don’t have the same opportunities that we’ve been given.”

Even former aide and current Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel challenged the dead broke claim in a public appearance with Hillary Clinton.

As Rahm looked on in apparent amusement, Hillary admitted,

“That may have not been the most artful way of saying that Bill and I have gone through a lot of different phases in our lives — that was then, this is now. Obviously, we are very fortunate. We’ve been given great opportunities.”

According to National Review, no one really ever needed to hold a bake sale for Hillary Clinton or her husband:

“Leaving aside for a brief moment how utterly farcical it is to use ‘struggle’ and ‘houses; in the same sentence, the notion that the Clintons were presented in their post-presidency with anything other than a license to print money is unyielding in its abject hilarity. By 2001, Bill Clinton had made $200,000 per annum for eight years while paying nothing toward his housing or upkeep, and, in addition to the extraordinarily lucrative speaking gigs that American ex-presidents are now to expect, he had a lifetime of pensions and benefits to look forward to. (David Graham points out that, in the last 14 years, he has received nearly $16 million from the government.) By the end of the year in which he left office, the couple had made $16 million and enjoyed between $5 and $30 million in assets. By 2004, they had $50 million to their names. And by 2014, Clinton had become the highest-earning former president in America’s history, with net assets of nearly $200 million. Being smart sorts, the couple knew full well that this was coming, which is why in 1999, with their apparently destructive legal bills still racking up, they bought a $6 million house in Chappaqua, N.Y., so that Hillary could legally run for the Senate. One suspects that if the Clintons had been genuinely worried that their legal fights might bankrupt them, they would not have done this, nor would friend Terry McAuliffe have agreed to loan them $1.3 million toward its purchase.”

As the wife of an ex-president, Hillary Clinton lives in a bubble of 24-hour taxpayer-paid Secret Service protection and recently admitted that she hasn’t driven a car in nearly two decades.

Hillary Clinton enjoys the support of the feminist movement, but ironically, she owes virtually her entire career to the coattails of her husband, who was the attorney general and then governor of Arkansas before winning the presidency.

Mrs. Clinton’s windfall, which included an $8 million book deal as she was exiting the White House at the end of her husband’s second term, seems to make it a challenge for her to run for office as someone who can fix so-called income inequality, which is expected to be one of her campaign planks. Said US Sen. Rand Paul, “there [are] a lot of Americans struggling; if she wants to come to Eastern Kentucky to my state and talk to miners who are out of work and see the despair in their faces and talk about her personal plight as being the poor spouse of a president, she is welcome to take that message around the country.”

As far as the terrorist murder of four Americans in Benghazi is concerned, Clinton seemed to accept responsibility, sort of, in the Sawyer interview:

“I take responsibility, but I was not making security decisions. I’m not equipped to sit and look at blueprints, to determine where the blast walls need to be or where the reinforcements need to be.”

The Washington Post noted, “When Sawyer asked Clinton to detail a marquee accomplishment or signature doctrine as secretary, she gave no answer.” With regard to this form of struggling, pinpointing actual accomplishments at the State Department has been an area that Clinton herself and many of her supporters have previously struggled to identify.

In the Rahm Emanuel book-promotion joint appearance today, Hillary Clinton also wrongly claimed that Abraham Lincoln was elected Senator from Illinois while in reality he lost to Stephen A. Douglas in the historic campaign famous for the Lincoln-Douglas debates.

Do you think Hillary Clinton was anywhere near dead broke in the year 2001?