Bill and Hillary Clinton kicked off their “one-of-a-kind” speaking tour in Canada on Tuesday evening, with last-minute tickets being sold for as little as $6.55 Canadian, or just less than 5 U.S. dollars.
The Daily Mail reports that the Clintons sold about 3,300 tickets in a Toronto venue that holds over 19,000 seats for hockey games (as Breitbart points out, that equates to about 83% empty seats).
There were still plenty of tickets available 30 minutes before showtime, and a secondary market appeared to be dropping. The cheapest ticket available on Stubhub was going for $6.55 Canadian, or less than $5. On the official site, there were still seats up front on the floor available for $325, with other floor seats going for $83 plus a hefty service charge. Officials told DailyMail.com organizers were expecting 3,300 people, with about 1,000 buying up close seats on the floor.
The tour, titled, An Evening with the Clintons, will hit 13 cities between now and May of 2019. The paid speaking event is being promoted by Live Nation which describes the speaking tour as a “‘one-of-a-kind conversations with the two leaders as they tell their stories from some of the most impactful moments in modern history.” Live Nation says the tour “will feature joint on stage conversations with the two leaders sharing stories and inspiring anecdotes that shaped their historic careers in public service, while also discussing issues of the day and looking towards the future.”
Some Democrats are finding the speaking tour inappropriate, with one former Clinton aide telling CNN, “I just think the optics of going to an event where people are paying to see them, and they are financially gaining from this, I am not sure that is the right way to reingratiate them back into the public sphere. They haven’t gone away, and I don’t want them to go away, but I am not sure this is the right venue from an optics standpoint.”
Tuesday night’s event featured many jabs at President Trump, as well as discussions about Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the midterm elections, the killing of Osama Bin Laden and the Iran deal.
And of course, it wouldn’t have been a Clinton speaking event if Hillary didn’t have a coughing fit:
