This is a perfect example of Hillary Clinton's 1 percent problem

Hillary Clinton
(Image credit: Getty Images)

Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton's plans for this evening include a high-dollar fundraising event in Baton Rouge hosted by businessman Jim Bernhard. Bernhard was previously CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and when the corporation was bought out two years ago, his severance package totaled some $54 million, including a retirement fund, stock options, and cash.

That kind of money might be par for the course in presidential fundraising, but it stands out as the sort of high executive salary and "golden parachute" Clinton has repeatedly critiqued. This apparent hypocrisy is typical of Clinton's one percent problem: She presents herself as an economic populist but maintains close ties to Wall Street and big business. Clinton herself made nearly $12 million in speech fees in the two years between her State Department tenure and presidential campaign, putting her annual earnings at about 240 times the median American salary of $27,700.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.