Politics

Inside the Clinton paid speech machine

Hillary and Bill Clinton’s highly paid speeches — whose transcripts they steadfastly refuse to release despite pressure on the campaign trail — are cloaked in secrecy.

Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump have both seized on the issue, raising red flags about what the Clintons say behind closed doors to Wall Street firms and other groups that they don’t say in public. By digging in their heels, the Clintons have only drawn more attention to the question: What, exactly, do you get when you pay a Clinton hundreds of thousands of dollars for an intimate, closed-to-the-press speech?

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In Bill Clinton’s case, it turns out, you get a dose of the full, unplugged Bubba.

A transcript of a private, $285,000 paid speech Bill Clinton delivered last year at the “China-U.S. Private Investment Summit” in Austin, Texas, obtained by POLITICO, offers a glimpse behind the curtain of the Clintons' controversial paid speaking gigs — and some insight into how the former president holds court out of sight of the press.