Says Hillary Clinton said in an email that she didn’t want Michelle Obama at the same events as her.
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No, Wikileaks didn’t release an email that shows Hillary Clinton insulting Michelle Obama
The 2008 Democratic presidential primary was at times tense as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama vied for their party’s nomination. But did she criticize Michelle Obama eight years later during Clinton’s unsuccessful bid against Donald Trump?
"Do we really need that Michelle [expletive] to be at the same events?" reads a Facebook post published on April 23. "It’s enough to have her dumb [expletive] pimp stinking up the works. These [expletive] for brains voters need to just vote already."
The post cites WikiLeaks and claims Clinton made the comments in an email to her daughter, Chelsea Clinton, on Oct. 20, 2016.
This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.)
But searching WikiLeaks’ archive of emails Hillary Clinton sent and received on a private email server when she was Secretary of State, we couldn’t find the statement the Facebook post attributes to her. The archive was last updated on Feb. 2, 2018, according to Wikileaks.
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When we searched the Wikileaks database of emails from the U.S. Democratic National Committee, we couldn’t find the statement there, either.
We also couldn’t find the statement in a trove of emails from the hacked account of Clinton’s campaign chairman, John Podesta.
Lastly, we looked for news stories of Clinton making such a statement about Michelle Obama. Between the release of hacked emails to the controversy over Clinton using a private email server while she was secretary of state, the two-time presidential hopeful has garnered wide media coverage when it comes to messages sent online. It would follow that such inflammatory comments about Michelle Obama would draw journalists’ attention. And yet, we found no credible reports that Clinton ever said such a thing.
We rate this Facebook post as Pants on Fire!
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Our Sources
Facebook post, April 23, 2019
WikiLeaks, Hillary Clinton Email Archive, visited April 24, 2019
WikiLeaks, DNC email database, visited April 24, 2019
WikiLeaks, The Podesta Emails, visited April 25, 2019
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No, Wikileaks didn’t release an email that shows Hillary Clinton insulting Michelle Obama
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