Clinton denies she is too close to Wall Street
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton says the Wall Street bankers who gave her millions of dollars don’t have any influence over her policy positions.
Asked whether she is too close to Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street special interests to “reel them in,” Clinton replied that “anybody who thinks that they can influence what I can do doesn’t know me very well.”
{mosads}“They can actually look and see what I have said and done throughout my career,” Clinton told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow at the First in the South Presidential Candidates Forum at Rock Hill, S.C. on Friday.
“I went to Wall Street. I went to the NASDAQ in December 2007 and basically said, ‘You guys have got to stop it. What you are doing is not only a disaster for home owners because of the mortgage foreclosures … but it’s going to have dire consequences for our country.’ ”
Clinton answered most questions confidently, but seemed to get tripped up when Maddow asked about her support for the death penalty – a position opposed by many on the left, including Democratic primary rival Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Clinton’s answer — crammed with qualifiers — suggested an extreme ambivalence in her position.
Asked whether she would be disappointed if the Supreme Court struck down the death penalty as unconstitutional, Clinton said no.
“If the Supreme Court said, ‘No it violates the eighth amendment, it’s cruel and unusual punishment’ … I would breathe a sigh of relief about that, because I think many states have gone way too far,” she said, trying to explain her position.
“What I was talking about in my remarks recently was the federal system, where the numbers are much smaller,” Clinton added.
“And I do have some questions about removing [the death penalty] completely for terrorism, as an example. Right now Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attack, is going through the judicial process,” she continued.
“We had Timothy McVeigh who put a bomb at the federal building in Oklahoma City. So there are some really heinous crimes that are in my view still arguably ones that should potentially have the death penalty.”
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