Hillary Clinton has acknowledged the surprising effectiveness of the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory, a baseless claim that targeted her during her 2016 presidential campaign. In a recent interview with Kara Swisher, Clinton described online ads featuring memes and conspiracies as "really effective" in harming her campaign.
"Facebook was the worst offender against me, and Pizzagate, which was just a huge lie that took off," Clinton stated. The conspiracy alleged that Clinton and her campaign chairman, John Podesta, were secretly running a child sex ring from the basement of Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, D.C. pizza restaurant. The claim was entirely unfounded; Comet Ping Pong does not have a basement. Despite its falsity, the conspiracy gained traction online, leading to a real-world incident in December 2016 when a North Carolina man, Edgar Maddison Welch, fired a rifle inside the restaurant while searching for nonexistent children.
Clinton expressed that her campaign was "frankly ill-prepared, unaware of how effective it could be." She noted that these "terrible, horrible, false claims" spread widely across the internet, with some supported by Russian funding. She explained that her campaign staff and volunteers were on the front lines, encountering voters who had absorbed these false narratives.
"And when, you know, my supporters would say, ‘Where did you hear that? It’s not true.’ They’d say, ‘Oh, I saw it on the internet,’" Clinton recalled. She highlighted the "naivete and the susceptibility of people seeing a video or seeing something in print that looked legitimate was so powerful." This experience, she argued, underscores the significant amount of money being spent in current election cycles to spread falsehoods about Democratic candidates.
The interview, which also touched on other election-related topics, can be viewed in full, with Clinton's remarks on Pizzagate beginning around the 53-minute mark.