Could electing Hillary Clinton president wind up being a “twofer”?
Former president Bill Clinton said he might take less of an executive role with The Clinton Foundation or even step down as its highly visible leader should his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton, be elected president. “If it’s the right thing to do, I will,” he said in a TV interview Monday.
Clinton was being interviewed by Cynthia McFadden of NBC News in Kenya, where he was showing off the good works of the Clinton Global Initiative, including the provision of hearing aids via The Starkey Hearing Foundation, when McFadden asked what might make him disengage.
“If I were asked to do something in the public interest that I had an obligation to do,” he said during a segment that aired yesterday on NBC’s “Today”.
Clinton said he intended to continue giving speeches, for which he is paid $500,000 or more (“I gotta pay our bills!”) during his wife’s campaign and defended his speeches and his charity work.
“There’s never been anything like the Clinton Global Initiative, where you raise over $100 billion worth of stuff that’s helped 430 million people in 180 countries,” he said. The famed orator said he declines a speaking gig “if I think there’s something wrong with it” and works hard on the ones he accepts. “I spend a couple hours a day just doing the research. People like to hear me speak,” he said.
Concerning donations in the past from countries such as Saudi Arabia (the Foundation now limits financial contributions to six western nations), Clinton said: “I don’t think there’s anything sinister in trying to get wealthy people in countries that are seriously involved in development to spend their money wisely in a way that helps poor people and lifts them up.”
