Silke Jasso
CNN host Van Jones had a suggestion for former President Obama’s post-White House speech circuit: do a “poverty tour” first to offset his pricey speeches.
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Former President Barack Obama has received criticism for charging high fees for his post-presidency speeches, including charging $400,000 for a speech to a Wall Street firm’s health care conference this coming September.
Critics, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who said she was “troubled” by it, and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who said he hoped Obama “would not have given a speech like this,” see it as problematic for public officials, or former public officials, to receive money from the business sector they were once charged with regulating.
During a visit to CNN’s “State of the Union,” Jones defended Obama’s decision to charge high fees for his speeches, saying that it would be unfair to force a “double standard” on him. “Every other president went out there and gave big speeches — don’t hold them to a second standard, don’t give a double standard to him,” he said.
Jones added that Obama “should not be the first president to have to be broke.”
The host of the “Messy Truth,” instead, suggested that Obama “do a tour, go to Appalachia, go to Native American reservations where they are shoving these pipelines down their throats, and they don’t even have clean water. Go to South Central, go to the Arizona border, where you have a lot of poverty.”
“If [Obama] would do a poverty tour first, from a moral point of view, it would be great for him to do,” he said.
