Howard Dean: Has To Be ‘Curtailing’ of Who Clinton Gives Speeches To

Former Vermont Governor and DNC Chairman Howard Dean argued that “there’s going to have to be some curtailing” of who Bill Clinton gives paid speeches to on Tuesday’s “MSNBC Live.”

Dean first commented on Clinton’s declining trust and favorability numbers, stating, “it’s not terribly worrisome. First of all, there’s no there there. The press has been talking about this for two weeks and have yet to find anything that’s really damning and certainly nothing that’s illegal. Secondly, this is what was expected. And I’m actually glad it’s happening now. The GOP is throwing everything they can at her. This is mostly — this is about politics. I think she has actually survived quite well and I was very happy with the numbers that she showed, and actually a little surprised at how strong she was against all of the Republicans, including Jeb Bush. She still leads them by a very significant margin. Now, again this is the very early part of the campaign. The polls are gonna change. But i think, you know, I think, so far, so good.”

He then commented on Bill Clinton’s declaration that he’ll keep giving speeches because he has to pay the bills and his ambiguity about his involvement with the Clinton Foundation. Dean said, “first of all, it’s absolutely okay to continue the foundation work. They’ve helped 485 million people around the globe in the last — since the existence of the foundation. There’s not a single Republican candidate that can say anything like that. So, for us to be criticizing the existence of the foundation, whether President Clinton is involved or not is nuts. And so it’s definitely not the right thing to do. What he does have to be careful about, should Hillary win, is where that money comes from, that’s first of all. Second of all, he does, in the course of making speeches for money over the next year and a half, have to be careful about who he gets the money from. So, there’s going to have to be some curtailing of exactly who he’s giving those speeches to, so as to avoid the appearance of impropriety. That’s for sure. But I would — I think it would be an outrageous suggestion that he should give up the Clinton Foundation.”

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