Fake News: Hillary Clinton did NOT say Democratic voters are 'stupid' and 'easy to manipulate'

Fact Check

  • by: Molly Weisner

STORY UPDATED: check for updates below.

Fake News: Hillary Clinton did NOT say Democratic voters are 'stupid' and 'easy to manipulate'

Did Hillary Clinton say Democratic voters are stupid and easy to manipulate? No, that's not true: the claim, which originally went viral in 2015, has resurfaced and implies Clinton said those words in an interview with Dick Morris for his book, "Rewriting History". The image can be traced back to a Tumblr page that posted falsified Clinton quotes. The image has since circulated on Twitter, Pinterest and elsewhere.

The image was found in a tweet (archived here) where it was published by former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Alexander Clarke Jr. on December 30, 2017. The text surrounding the photo reads:

"Look, the average Democrat voter is just plain stupid. They're easy to manipulate. That's the easy part." - Hillary Clinton, as told to Dick Morris in "Rewriting History," 2005.

Clarke served as sheriff of the Wisconsin county for 15 years, from 2002 until 2017. Elected as a Democrat to the office, Clarke's political views mirror more conservative thinkers and politicians, according to his website. In addition to appearing on FOX News as a commentator, the former sheriff spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention that selected now-President Trump as the nominee against Clinton in the general election.

Clarke's tweet follows:

The claim against Clinton was also debunked as false by Snopes and several other fact-checking sites in the same year it first went viral.

Morris did, however, write the book, "Rewriting History". But it was published in 2004, years before the false claim went viral, and it explored various aspects of Clinton's personal and political life. Morris was former President Bill Clinton's political consultant for nearly two decades, as well as a commentator for Fox News and other networks.

Additionally, the Tumblr page, which still hosts an early version of the image, says in its description to readers: "get to know the clinical Sociopath known as Hillary Clinton" and encourages visitors of the page to vote for Donald Trump in 2020.

Updates:

  • 2019-12-27T10:55:21Z 2019-12-27T10:55:21Z
    We corrected the nominating convention for President Trump to the Republican National Convention.

  Molly Weisner

Molly is a staff writer and fact-checker at Lead Stories based in North Carolina. She is a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studying media and journalism, with a specific interest in investigative reporting. Molly is also a reporter on several projects based out of UNC's journalism school, including another fact-checking initiative and an online weekly for a former news desert in Chatham County, North Carolina. Molly has also pursued freelance reporting in tracking the juvenile justice system in North Carolina.

Read more about or contact Molly Weisner

Different viewpoints

Note: if reading this fact check makes you want to contact us to complain about bias, please check out our Red feed first.

About Us

International Fact-Checking Organization Meta Third-Party Fact Checker

Lead Stories is a fact checking website that is always looking for the latest false, misleading, deceptive or inaccurate stories, videos or images going viral on the internet.
Spotted something? Let us know!.

Lead Stories is a:


@leadstories

Subscribe to our newsletter

* indicates required

Please select all the ways you would like to hear from Lead Stories LLC:

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. For information about our privacy practices, please visit our website.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp's privacy practices here.

Most Read

Most Recent

Share your opinion