Fake News: Hillary Clinton NOT Arrested Drunk Outside of Trump Plaza Hotel

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Hillary Clinton NOT Arrested Drunk Outside of Trump Plaza Hotel

Was Hillary Clinton arrested drunk outside Trump Plaza Hotel? No, that's not true: the entire story was made up by a liberal satire website that tries to fool conservatives and Trump supporters into sharing ridiculously fake stories to teach them to be more careful about liking and sharing content without actually having read it in full. The story is not real.

The story originated from an article published by Be Best Website on November 20, 2018 titled "BREAKING : Hillary Clinton Arrested Drunk Outside of Trump Plaza Hotel" (archived here) which opened:

State police were called to the Trump Plaza hotel yesterday on a 177 call, code for "drunk and disorderly", and were shocked to find that the suspect was none other than former candidate and Benghazi enthusiast Hillary Clinton.

Mrs. Clinton allegedly told police that she named her tequila bottle "Chelsea" because it was in her belly, and then shot out pretty fast.

Officers Poncharello and Cipowitz responded to the call at seventeen minutes after midnight to find Mrs. Clinton "obviously inebriated and out of control." Their filed report was leaked to the New York Daily Cooch.

The kind of people who like and share without clicking would only have seen this:

BREAKING : Hillary Clinton Arrested Drunk Outside of Trump Plaza Hotel

State police were called to the Trump Plaza hotel yesterday on a 177 call, code for "drunk and disorderly", and were shocked to find that the suspect was none other than former candidat...

Obviously there is no news outlet named the New York Daily Cooch and the name of one of the police officers sounds a lot like one of the characters from a late seventies cop show while the other one seems to have been based on someone from a nineties cop show.

The site comes with a clear satire disclaimer at the bottom of each article:

sat·ire ~ˈsaˌtī(ə)r
noun
the use of humor, irony, exaggeration, OR ridicule to expose and criticize people's stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.
If you disagree with the definition of satire or have decided it is synonymous with "comedy," you should really just move along.

The owner and main writer of the site is self-professed liberal troll Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has made it his full time job to troll gullible conservatives and Trump supporters into liking and sharing his articles. He runs several other websites, including potatriotpost.us, dailyworldupdate.us and nofakenewsonline.us. Sometimes he is also known under his nickname "Busta Troll". A second man working on the sites is John Prager as revealed in this earlier story we wrote.

Articles from Blair's sites frequently get copied by "real" fake news sites who often omit the satire disclaimer and any other hints the stories are fake. Blair has tried to get these sites shut down in the past but new ones keep cropping up and he keeps knocking them down.

Blair and his operation were profiled by the Washington Post on November 17, 2018 by Eli Saslow:

'Nothing on this page is real': How lies become truth in online America

November 17 The only light in the house came from the glow of three computer monitors, and Christopher Blair, 46, sat down at a keyboard and started to type. His wife had left for work and his children were on their way to school, but waiting online was his other community, an unreality where nothing was exactly as it seemed.

If you are interested in learning more about Blair and the history of his sites, here is something to get you started:

The Ultimate Christopher Blair and America's Last Line of Defense Reading List | Lead Stories

STORY UPDATED: check for updates below. Yesterday Eli Saslow at the Washington Post wrote a fantastic article about Christopher Blair, a man from Maine who has been trolling conservatives and Trump supporters online for years and occasionally even made a living out of it.

If you see one of his stories on a site that does not contain a satire disclaimer, assume it is fake news. If you do see the satire disclaimer it is of course also fake news.

We wrote about bebest.website before, here are our most recent articles that mention the site:

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  Maarten Schenk

Lead Stories co-founder Maarten Schenk is our resident expert on fake news and hoax websites. He likes to go beyond just debunking trending fake news stories and is endlessly fascinated by the dazzling variety of psychological and technical tricks used by the people and networks who intentionally spread made-up things on the internet.  He can often be found at conferences and events about fake news, disinformation and fact checking when he is not in his office in Belgium monitoring and tracking the latest fake article to go viral.

Read more about or contact Maarten Schenk

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