Hillary Clinton Blackface Hoax Explodes After Virginia Scandals

This story originally appeared in Right Richter, a newsletter by Will Sommer. Subscribe now to see what's happening in right-wing media from the safety of your inbox.

Now right-wing internet hoaxers claim they’ve found something even bigger: a picture of Hillary Clinton purportedly wearing blackface, next to a smiling Bill Clinton dressed as a country bumpkin.

The photo of “Clinton” obviously isn’t actually her. The woman in blackface has brown eyes, while Clinton has blue eyes. Bill Clinton is significantly taller than his wife, while the couple in the picture has a smaller height disparity. Additionally, the guy in the picture doesn’t even look all that much like Bill Clinton.

But that hasn’t stopped the fringier elements of the pro-Trump right from picking it up. The picture originally spread through links to an album on the photo-sharing website Imgur, but was eventually deleted. From there, the story went on to be repeated by several fake news blogs, including InfoWars guest Mike Adams’ Natural News. Little-known Twitter accounts have been promoting the photo several times an hour since the Northam story broke last week.

“Hillary wore the liberal-offending BlackFace that she’s now condemning soon-to-be-ex-Governor Ralph ‘BlackFace Northam for wearing,” Natural News wrote. “Oops. Busted.”

Want this in your inbox? Subscribe to Right Richter here.

The blackface hoax has been mostly ignored by bigger personalities on the right, aside from a retweet from Republican consultant Dave Carney, who has worked for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Carney declined to comment to The Daily Beast.

The photo first surfaced in 2016, during Clinton’s run for president. Back then, Snopes traced it to a 2015 tweet also promoting the idea that Clinton was in blackface, but was unable to identity the people in the picture.