The Clintons campaign in Las Vegas in February 2016. (David Becker/Reuters)

Sometimes whataboutism is healthy. At an awards ceremony this weekend, Hillary Clinton said that Donald Trump had “turned American diplomacy into a cheap extortion racket.”

I’m trying to imagine a worse person to deliver this message. The Clinton Foundation accepted millions of dollars from foreign governments just when Hilary Clinton was secretary of state under Obama. Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Australia, Norway, and the Dominican Republic all gave.


This is nothing to say of the various petty rulers, and governments that gave to the Clinton Global Initiative, to the Clinton Foundation, or to the Clintons directly, merely for the presence and boring speeches, in the years between Bill Clinton’s presidency and two different presidential runs by Hillary. It is one of the most astonishing things in the world that the Clintons have become as wealthy as America’s aristocratic families for just being themselves.