Peter Schweizer, author of the best-selling book Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow for Tuesday’s edition of Breitbart News Daily.
“I think it’s important that we have this national conversation about Washington, D.C., and what the problem is,” said Schweizer, gratified that the topic of corruption has become an important part of the 2016 election. “For too long, Alex, the political debate has been, ‘Well, should it be Republicans or should it be Democrats?’ People have failed to recognize that really, on a lot of cases, it’s two sides of the same coin – that you’re essentially getting the same thing.”
Schweizer allowed that he was “not necessarily a huge fan” of Donald Trump, but said he was “glad this is a conversation we’re having in the country because at the end of the day, we have to decide: is America going to be run by a political class in Washington? They might have a D or an R after their name, but they’re basically the same political class, with the same worldview, or is it going to be run by the American people? That’s really the debate that we’re having.”
Marlow played an excerpt from a Trump speech on Monday in which he discussed a number of anti-corruption reforms, including a five-year moratorium before former public officials could become lobbyists, and a ban on registered foreign lobbyists raising money to influence American politics.
“This is essentially a Peter Schweizer talking point – using the word ‘cronies’ repeatedly, coming after the lobbyists, coming after, really, Cantor and Boehner almost directly,” Marlow observed, referring to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and former House Speaker John Boehner, respectively.
Schweizer said the speech was an “example of Trump at his best,” illustrating “what a lot of the power and energy behind him is.”
“People are upset with Washington, D.C.,” he said. “You know there have been in this election, obviously, all kinds of distractions of one sort or another, but this is, I think, brilliantly laid out, about what the core issue is – which is, you have a political class in Washington that gets wealthy off of the business of government, and their interest is in who pays them, not in serving the American people.”
“I think those reforms are fantastic,” he said of Trump’s proposals, adding that “every election, we have candidates from both political parties talk about ethics, talk about cleaning up Washington, but you know, very few people actually believe they’re gonna do it because they’re part of the system.”
“With Trump, there is that sense that, look, here is a guy who really is an outsider from Washington, D.C. He gave to some political candidates and whatnot, but he’s not in and of and part of that culture. If this is going to get done, it’s going to take somebody like a Trump to do it, who’s not part of the system. It’s not only the call for the reforms, but the sense that, okay, there’s a real seriousness behind it, and this is exactly the kind of talk that we need in Washington, D.C., and we need in this campaign,” Schweizer said.
Marlow asked for his take on the disclosure of Hillary Clinton’s lavishly compensated speeches to various special interests.
“What’s really stunning about this is two things. Number one, that you’re finally getting some people to acknowledge that this is how the Clintons roll, that they say different things to different people,” Schweizer replied, noting that Hillary Clinton’s remarks to private audiences were often strikingly different from her public pronouncements on various issues.
“But the second thing that I still think remains the most troubling is this is standard operating procedure,” he continued. “This is expected. This is even encouraged in Clintonworld. They don’t see anything wrong, fundamentally wrong, with telling the American people one thing and telling Goldman Sachs something else behind closed doors. And that, I think, is sort of the core of the issue. They do what everybody else does in Washington, on steroids. I think that’s part of what people are so fed up with, is that people in political office won’t level with them, won’t be straightforward, and won’t be honest and tell them what they really think.”
“Is this going to be a turning point in American politics? Probably no,” he predicted. “You’ve got a lot of money that’s flowing in, so you’re going to have politicians that continue to be two-faced in this way. But in the case of the Clintons, this is an opportunity for there to be a national referendum on this kind of behavior. As I said, the Clintons are masters of it. They have been masters of it. Now, with WikiLeaks, with some of the other information coming out, it is exposed for all its glory, for everyone to see.”
Schweizer said some overlooked Clinton revelations could be found within the FBI report about a “quid pro quo” deal that “Undersecretary Kennedy was trying to strike with the FBI.”
“If you go to page 43 of that document, of the testimony that the FBI conducted interviews of people with State Department security, those four or five pages are absolutely stunning on so many levels,” he said. “The first thing is, State Department security people report that Hillary Clinton and some of her aides went to the State Department in 2009 and removed furniture and lamps, to take to her private residence – which of course is reminiscent of what the Clintons did when they left the White House. So they’re still engaging in that same behavior.”
“The second thing that struck me, and I found particularly stunning, is the testimony of the security people at the State Department, who said that she ignored security protocols,” he continued. “There are examples in there where State Department employees’ security was put at risk because Hillary Clinton demanded a certain behavior, or a certain reaction, and the FBI report – remember, this is not a book written by somebody; this is an FBI report – says security personnel at the State Department, senior officials, no longer wanted to work with her.”
“If you work security in the State Department, the plum assignment is to work for the secretary of state,” Schweizer explained. “By the end of her tenure, all the people around her were junior security personnel because all the senior people just did not want to work with her.”
He said a third explosive revelation from the FBI report was that “security personnel observed that Huma Abedin is the most powerful aide that any of them had experienced before.”
“They say she makes a lot of the decisions on Hillary’s behalf, and, in fact, they point out that when Hillary Clinton would travel as secretary of state to another country, normal protocol would be for the U.S. Secretary of State to travel with the U.S. Ambassador from the airport to the embassy. Hillary Clinton refused to do that and would only travel with Huma Abedin. It’s very, very bizarre, and I think really needs to be highlighted by people, because it offers a dramatic insight into really what was going on during her tenure as secretary of state.”
Marlow noted that the mainstream media have decreed all questions about Huma Abedin’s influence as illegitimate “conspiracy theories,” but Schweizer insisted it was “a very, very legitimate issue.”
“If you look through American history, you certainly have the example of President Wilson, who was not in good health, and really it was his aides who were acting as president,” Schweizer noted. “In the case of Hillary Clinton, it’s a very legitimate issue. It even comes up in the emails, in that if you look through the emails, you find that so many decisions are being made, not by Hillary Clinton, but by her aides. There are even a couple of appearances that Hillary makes in the emails where she’ll send an email to somebody and say, ‘Let me know when I’m supposed to call them, and what I’m supposed to say.’”
“It really creates the impression, along with this FBI report, that she is sort of a passive leader, and you’ve got a lot of people in the crown court, so to speak, around her, the royal court around her, making a lot of decisions that really should be made by the President of the United States,” he said. “I think this is a very legitimate issue. It’s an important issue, and it goes to the heart of, if she wins in November, who is actually going to be making a lot of these decisions? Based on what you’re seeing in these FBI reports, it’s unclear that it’s going to be Hillary Clinton making a lot of those decisions.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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