I don’t understand, you say $400k is nothing, but then say he would have made money from the speaking circuit regardless, as if he didn’t do just that, and as i

I don’t understand, you say $400k is nothing, but then say he would have made money from the speaking circuit regardless, as if he didn’t do just that, and as if taking vast sums from powerful corporate interests whose interests he’d manifestly served during his time in office isn’t the definition of corruption. I’ve read claims that he makes about 50 speeches per year, which seems plausible, given that Bill and Hillary Clinton made 729 speeches between 2001 and 2016 for a total of $153 million ($210k average). See: https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/hillary-clinton-bill-clinton-paid-speeches/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2016/02/05/politics/hillary-clinton-bill... I want to go back to the $400k speech to the healthcare industry. First, the notion that this isn’t corruption because he made so much more money in a less unseemly manner is pretty curious. Does it not then follow that the very rich, so long as their original fortunes are not ill gotten, are incapable of corruption in principle ? Second, $400k is precisely the annual salary of the President(!). For maybe an hour of work. It’s not just egregious, it’s super on the nose. Third, imagine he’d put every bit of political capital at his disposal into the fight to create a single payer system, and against the odds (and the money of those executives to whom he gave the speech) succeeded. Do you think the healthcare industry (or the part that’d still exist) would still pay $400k for an hour of his time?