Fake News: Hillary Clinton Did NOT Say 'The Only Crime I Ever Committed Was Stealing The Hearts Of The American People'

Fact Check

  • by: Maarten Schenk
Fake News: Hillary Clinton Did NOT Say 'The Only Crime I Ever Committed Was Stealing The Hearts Of The American People'

Did Hillary Clinton ever say 'The Only Crime I Ever Committed Was Stealing The Hearts Of The American People'? No, that's not true: the quote was made up by a Christian-themed satire website but went massively viral after several right-wing and conservatives Facebook pages published links to the story with many people not realizing it was not actually real.

The quote originated from a satirical article published on November 12, 2018 by The Babylon Bee titled "Hillary Clinton: 'The Only Crime I Ever Committed Was Stealing The Hearts Of The American People'" (archived here) which opened:

WASHINGTON, D.C.--In an interview over the weekend, Hillary Clinton continued to deny any wrongdoing in the various controversies she was involved with during her time as Secretary of State and the 2016 Democratic candidate, claiming her only crime was "stealing the hearts of the American people."

The interviewer asked Clinton if she was guilty of any of the myriad accusations against her when she admitted to being "100% guilty" of being America's sweetheart.

Users on social media only saw this title, description and thumbnail so it was not immediately obvious it was satire:

Hillary Clinton: 'The Only Crime I Ever Committed Was Stealing The Hearts Of The American People'

WASHINGTON, D.C.--In an interview over the weekend, Hillary Clinton continued to deny any wrongdoing in the various controversies she was involved with during her time as Secretary of State and the 2016 Democratic candidate, claiming her only crime was "stealing the hearts of the American people."The interviewer asked Clinton if she was guilty o ...

But "The Babylon Bee" comes with following dislaimer on every page:

The Babylon Bee is Your Trusted Source For Christian News Satire.

Some of their greatest past hits include:

With a track record like that it is clear that you shouldn't take anything posted on the site seriously and you definitely shouldn't confuse it with real news.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro shared the story with his over four million fans, with just the added comment "LOL", which could have confused some of his readers into thinking he was laughing at Clinton instead of a funny bit of satire.

It was similar on the page of Michael Knowles:

Or The Daily Wire:

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

Want to inform others about the accuracy of this story?

See who is sharing it (it might even be your friends...) and leave the link in the comments.:


  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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