A year ago, before Donald Trump dubbed her "Crooked Hillary" and Bernie Sanders was assailing her secretive speeches to Wall Street banks, Hillary Clinton looked like a powerful p residential front-runner. Then, in May, HarperCollins published an investigative book about the Clintons by the conservative author Peter Schweizer that caught them off guard and took a prominent place in the political conversation for months. Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich became a surprise bestseller.[1][2][3]
Today, Clinton has righted the ship and her candidacy looks stronger than ever. But while polls suggest Trump and Sanders will have a hard time stopping her, the team behind Clinton Cash—Schweizer and Stephen K. Bannon, the executive chairman[4] of Breitbart News—haven't given up. They've turned Clinton Cash into a movie, directed by M.A. Taylor, that will premiere next month in Cannes, France, during the Cannes Film Festival. (The movie is not a part of the festival, but will be shown at a screening arr anged for distributors).
As the trailer below indicates, the Clinton Cash movie is less Ken Burns than Jerry Bruckheimer, featuring blood-drenched money, radical madrassas, and ominous footage of the Clintons:
"It's a story that resonated with people on the printed page," said Schweizer. "We felt we needed to look at other platforms, too. The key is to engage voters. If you look at what's motivating Trump and Sanders fans, it's disgust with cronyism and corruption in Washington."
Trump, for one, sounds likely to amplify the book's criticism against Clinton during the general-election campaign. On Wednesday, the Republican front-runner said in an interview on SiriusXM radio[5], "I think we'll whip out that book because that book will become very pertinent. I'm surprised it hasn't been used by Sanders."
According to Bannon, the film's U.S. premiere will be held in Philadelphia on July 24 on the eve of the Democratic National Convention. During the first week of August, he added, it will have a limited release in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and San Francisco.
References
- ^ Donald Trump (www.bloomberg.com)
- ^ Bernie Sanders (www.bloomberg.com)
- ^ Hillary Clinton (www.bloomberg.com)
- ^ executive chairman (www.bloomberg.com)
- ^ an interview on SiriusXM radio (www.breitbart.com)
