Hillary on Her Hard Knock Life After the White House

Hillary Clinton admitted in an interview with ABC News that she had made $5 million dollars giving speeches. Hillary told interviewer Diane Sawyer that after leaving the White House she and bill had struggled to make ends meet (video created by the Free Beacon):

You have no reason to remember but we came out of the White House not only dead broke but in debt…and we struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages for houses, for Chelsea’s education. You know it was not easy.

Clinton goes on to complain about her tax bracket saying “you had to make double the money because of, obviously, taxes.” This almost sounds like a complaint that taxes are too high, but that can’t be right.

If it existed at all, the barely scrapping by phase of the Clinton’s life didn’t last very long. Hillary took a nearly record $8 million dollar advance to write a book in December 2000, i.e. before she and bill left office. According to their 2001 tax returns, the Clintons earned an adjusted gross income of $16 million dollars. Maybe that’s just getting by compared to what they would make later but still it’s a lot of money to most people.

Which brings me to a point of comparison. If you remember back to 2012 campaign, you may recall that Mitt Romney was routinely accused of being wealthy and out of touch with ordinary people. When he offered to make a $10,000 bet during a primary debate it was judged a defining moment. The DNC jumped all over him:

FACT: $10,000 is almost three times what the average family spends on groceries in a year. http://t.co/y4cYstZa #IowaDebate

— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) December 11, 2011

They even created a video highlight reel:

Here we are a few years later and Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton is casually dismissing her multimillion dollar fortune and suggesting she has struggled to make ends meet. It’s the kind of thing that would be roundly laughed at if a Republican had said it.