(NewsNation) — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton predicts voters will be subjected to widespread misinformation in October as the 2024 presidential election draws near.
Clinton on Friday joined PBS’ “Firing Line with Margaret Hoover,” where the 2016 Democratic nominee warned, “There will be concerted efforts to distort and pervert Kamala Harris, who she is, what she stands for, what she’s done.”
Russia, Iran and China are “very active” in the election and could influence voters with misinformation in the coming weeks, Clinton said.
“I anticipate there will be a full-court press in October,” she said. “The digital airwaves will be filled. And why does that matter? Because the press that is pro-Trump anyway — oftentimes stories are put on digitally that then are picked up by, let’s say, at Fox and others. And then those stories are stories, so the mainstream press reports on them, and so that story then takes on a life of its own.”
Clinton referenced false allegations that spread during her 2016 presidential campaign and came to be known as “Pizzagate.” The baseless rumors purported Clinton and other Democrats had ties to a child sex-trafficking ring headquartered in a D.C. pizza joint.
The misinformation first spread on message boards and then moved to social media in late October 2016. It then gained traction on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ media outlet InfoWars before The New York Times published the first article debunking Pizzagate about a month after the allegations first appeared on Facebook.
“Don’t laugh,” Clinton told the audience during Friday’s interview. “It was a huge story. And it got one young man in North Carolina to get into his car with his assault rifle and drive up to liberate these nonexistent children and shoot up a pizzeria in Washington, D.C. This is dangerous stuff.”
The gunman was sentenced to four years in prison in 2017 for carrying a loaded AR-15 assault rifle and a revolver into the pizza restaurant, sending employees and customers scattering and firing his assault rifle into a door, according to the Justice Department.