What was claimed
Ahead of the 2016 US presidential election, the-then Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton emailed the Democratic National Committee interim chair Donna Brazile, saying that if that “bastard” wins, “we’re all going to hang from nooses”.
Our verdict
There’s no evidence this quote is real, and it has been debunked many times.
An unevidenced claim that Hillary Clinton sent an expletive-laden email about a possible Donald Trump win in the 2016 US presidential election has been circulating again online.
Posts featuring an image of the former Democratic presidential candidate have been shared on Facebook, with overlaid text saying: “If that fuckin bastard wins, we’re all going to hang from nooses! You better fix this shit!”
The posts claim the quote came from an email to Donna Brazile, who was the interim chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), on 17 October 2016. This was prior to the election in November 2016, which was won by first-time Republican candidate Donald Trump.
But there’s no evidence this is a real quote from an exchange between Mrs Clinton and Ms Brazile, implied to be about Mr Trump winning. This post has been debunked many times before by other fact checkers.
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Full Fact could find no credible reporting of these quotes, and they do not appear in genuine leaked emails between Clinton staffers and the DNC which were published by Wikileaks in 2016.
The wording of the alleged quote is similar to that included in a 2016 article published by a now-defunct website, which claimed that Politico had reported Mrs Clinton had been overheard threatening executives at NBC saying: “If I lose, we all go down and that Fascist F*** will have us swinging from nooses! What the f*** is wrong with you idiots? [sic].”
But no such quote was published by Politico, and the defunct website published conspiracy theories, including claims that Queen Elizabeth II had admitted she was “not human”.
We often see fake quotes attributed to politicians or prominent figures shared on social media. Before sharing a post, it’s important to consider whether it comes from a trustworthy and reliable source—our Full Fact toolkit can help you do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because there’s no credible evidence that Hillary Clinton said this quote in an email to the interim Democratic National Committee chair.
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Subscribe to weekly email newsletters from Full Fact for updates on politics, immigration, health and more. Our fact checks are free to read but not to produce, so you will also get occasional emails about fundraising and other ways you can help. You can unsubscribe at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy.