Quick Take
There is no evidence to support claims that Hillary Clinton sent fellow Democrat Donna Brazile a profane email in 2016, calling Donald Trump a “bastard” and saying “we’re all going to hang from nooses” if he wins the election.
Full Story
Thousands of Facebook users have shared fictitious memes that claim, less than a month before the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton sent Donna Brazile, the former interim chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, a profanity-filled email about Clinton’s then-presidential rival, Donald Trump.
“If that f**kin bastard wins, we’re all going to hang from nooses – You better fix this sh*t,” one such meme says. It attributes the quote to “CrookedHillary’s email to Donna Brazile October 17th, 2016.”
But no record exists of the purported email from Clinton. In fact, the text is similar to other fake quotes that were attributed to Clinton in a September 2016 story by Victurus Libertas, which the New York Times has described as “a conspiracy-minded news site.”
The conspiracy site’s story claimed “inside sources” said Clinton had a “huge tantrum” after participating in an NBC News forum moderated by Matt Lauer in September 2016. The website then falsely attributed the following to Politico: “Hillary’s meltdown included throwing a water glass at a staffer – narrowly missing her head, and demanding Matt Lauer be fired! She was overheard threatening executives at NBC saying ‘If I lose, we all go down and that Fascist [expletive deleted] will have us swinging from nooses!”
It also claimed that Clinton “singled out” Brazile in the “rant,” telling her: “Get … to work janitoring this mess – do I make myself clear???”
Politico did report that “liberal operatives and Clinton supporters took exception to what they perceived as unbalanced questions, criticizing Lauer for failing to push back on false statements by Trump and for spending a significant amount of time on Clinton’s email scandal.” But the article did not mention any supposed Clinton tirade.
We also searched the Nexis news database and didn’t find the alleged Clinton quotes in any reports by major outlets, nor did we find them in the many stolen emails from Clinton campaign staffers and the DNC that were released by WikiLeaks prior to the last presidential election. There is simply no evidence that Clinton wrote what the memes say she did.
Editor’s note: FactCheck.org is one of several organizations working with Facebook to debunk misinformation shared on social media. Our previous stories can be found here.
Sources
Evon, Dan. “Did Hillary Clinton Throw a Tantrum with Matt Lauer?” Snopes.com. 22 Oct 2016.
“Temper! Temper! Hillary Goes On Rampage For Over An Hour- Throwing Glass at Staffer’s Head.” Victuruslibertas.com. Sep 2016.
Lima, Cristiano. “Liberals lash out at Lauer, NBC.” Politico. 7 Sep 2016.
Aisch, Gregory, et. al. “Dissecting the #PizzaGate Conspiracy Theories.” New York Times. 10 Dec 2016.