Hillary Clinton is once again revisiting the Pizzagate saga of 2016, this time conceding that the wild conspiracy theory was really effective in damaging her presidential ambitions.
In a new conversation with tech journalist Kara Swisher, Clinton reflected on the online attacks that dogged her failed 2016 campaign, focusing in particular on the viral narrative that she was at the center of a child-trafficking ring run out of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor, as reported by Mediaite. The discussion arose during a broader segment about Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamys controversial ad targeting Democrat Amy Acton, an ad that has drawn criticism from both parties for featuring Actons mother accusing her own daughter of dishonesty despite a history in which the mother sided with a husband indicted for sexually abusing Acton when she was just 12.
Clinton, who has long blamed online disinformation and foreign interference for her loss to President Donald Trump, condemned the Ramaswamy ad and urged outgoing Republican Gov. Mike DeWine to escalate his response. She pressed DeWine, who has already denounced the spot, to go further and declare he would not vote for Ramaswamy, signaling once again her preference for establishment figures over populist conservatives who challenge the political status quo.
Swisher then shifted the conversation to Clintons own experience with political attacks, asking her to recall the most memorable assault from her 2016 run. What, is there an ad that stuck with you that was against you that you were like, I cannot believe they just did that? Swisher asked, prompting Clinton to point not to traditional campaign ads, but to the digital ecosystem that amplified accusations against her.
You know, most of the really effective ads and memes and claims and conspiracies about me happened online, Clinton replied, underscoring her long-standing narrative that social media platforms tilted the playing field against her. Swisher joked, You remember you were a lizard, to which Clinton responded by singling out one company in particular, saying, Honest to goodness, you know, Facebook was the worst offender against me and Pizzagate, which you know was, you know, just a huge lie that took off.
Clinton admitted she could not even list all the attacks, describing the volume and intensity of the digital barrage. And you know, I cant really catalog them all because there were so many of them. And you know that was like 10 years ago and we were frankly ill prepared, unaware of how effective it could be, she said, casting herself and her team as victims of a new media landscape they failed to anticipate.
Pressed again by Swisher Im asking if theres one that got you like, oh my God Clinton returned to Pizzagate as the defining example. I look, I think Pizzagate was really effective when people, you know, when these ads against me, these really terrible, horrible, false claims about me were running all over the internet, some with Russian money for heavens sakes, she insisted, reviving the familiar allegation that foreign cash and covert influence operations played a decisive role in shaping voter perceptions.
Clinton recounted how her own volunteers encountered voters who had fully absorbed the online accusations. The people who were campaigning for me, they were on the phones, they were knocking on doors, they would have voters say, You know what? I cant vote for her because she kills people or she trafficks children or whatever they were told and that they believed, she said, portraying ordinary Americans as duped by sensational claims rather than making a reasoned judgment about her record.
She added that attempts to correct the record often hit a wall of blind faith in online content. And when, you know, my supporters would say, Where did you hear that? Its not true. Theyd say, Oh, I saw it on the internet, Clinton recalled, before lamenting, And you know, the naivete and the susceptibility of people seeing a video or seeing something in print that looked legitimate was so powerful and thats why you cant count out all of the money that is being spent against our candidates to lie about them again.
According to Pizzagate adherents, Clinton was allegedly running a pedophile ring out of the basement of Comet Ping Pong, a D.C. pizza shop that, in reality, does not even have a basement. One believer took the conspiracy so seriously that he entered the restaurant armed and fired shots while self-investigating the premises, later receiving a four-year prison sentence for the stunt, a stark reminder of how online narratives can spill into real-world danger even as Clinton continues to frame such episodes as central to explaining her defeat by President Trump.
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