Did former U.S. Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton congratulate Irish martial arts fighter Conor McGregor on his birthday by addressing him as "this future president" in 2025? No, that's not true: Clinton's account didn't display such a post. The fake was built on a 2016 Clinton tweet in which she referred to herself, not McGregor, as "this future president."
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X by McGregor on July 15, 2025. It opened:
Thank you
@HillaryClinton
🙏
This is what the post looked like on X:
(Source: X screenshot of the x.com/TheNotoriousMMA account)
The comment was a reply to another account's post that contained what appeared to be a screenshot of Hillary Clinton's account on the same social platform. That screenshot showed younger McGregor (archived here) and claimed that Clinton congratulated him as "this future president".
On March 20, 2025, McGregor suggested on his Instagram (archived here) that he would run for president of Ireland (archived here).
However, a manual review of Clinton's account on X did not show the post McGregor's Instagram post attributed to her.
What it showed (archived here) was that in October 2016, she -- a former Secretary of State (archived here) and that year's Democratic presidential nominee -- published a picture of herself with the same caption:
Happy birthday to this future president.
That post went live weeks before she lost to Donald Trump (archived here).
Amplifying the joke implicit in McGregor's post is the fact that he has announced he will seek the Irish presidency.
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Other Lead Stories fact checks mentioning Ireland are here.
