Hillary Clinton Is Alive and Apparently Well, Despite What You Might Have Seen

After losing the 2016 election to Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton mostly stepped away from life in the public eye. While she occasionally returns to promote a new book or campaign on behalf of Democrats, she is no longer the party's standard-bearer, and she seems to understand that.

Perhaps in part because she is no longer in the public eye all the time, rumors have begun to swirl online that Hillary Clinton is actually dead. Here's what we know about whether that's actually the case.

Hillary Clinton is alive and well, and there has been no indication that the former New York senator and first lady has died. A video began circulating on Facebook and other platforms in 2023 that appears to suggest that she had died, but the claims made in that video are false.

“We begin with the breaking news about Hillary Clinton’s death,” an anchor in the video says. The video then cuts to photos of Clinton as well as an interview with Mike Huckabee.

There's also audio of Clinton laughing with the hosts of the program as she tells them that she's part of a "robot race." Captions in the video say “That time they ‘accidentally’ reported that Hillary died,” and “The REAL Hillary is no longer with us.”

While all of this is real footage, it has been edited together in a way that seems misleading. The anchor who read the story made a mistake, and Clinton was joking with the anchors about being a robot.

The most damning clip, of the news anchor saying that Clinton has died, comes from a segment that was recorded after she left a 9/11 event in 2016 after falling ill.

He didn't correct himself in the original clip, but did go on to say "Hillary Clinton's doctor has just revealed the presidential candidate has been diagnosed with pneumonia," making it clear that he misspoke in saying that she died.

That event took place more than eight years ago, and in that time, Clinton has continued to make public appearances. The video appears to be suggesting that Clinton actually died on that day and was afterwards replaced by a robot. It's unclear what the goal of replacing Clinton with a robot would have been, but the theory has persisted for years after the video was originally posted in 2023.

The piece of sound in which Clinton suggests that she's a robot comes from an appearance on the Another Round podcast in 2015 in which she was asked about her weirdest trait, and shared that she doesn't really sweat. "I was constructed in a garage," she explained, clearly joking (or, in this telling, admitting a deep dark secret).

Hillary Clinton is alive and well, and while she's no longer at the center of American politics, she was not replaced by a robot. Imagine if a robot version of Hillary Clinton did exist, and for the most part they just hung out in a cabin in upstate New York. What would be the point of that?