The transition team of US President-elect Donald Trump has turned down the claims of Democrats that Hillary Clinton lost the November 8 election due to the epidemic of fake news in the run-up to Election Day.
Some Democrats, including President Barack Obama, have argued that the Democratic nominee lost the presidential election to Republican Trump because of the spread of fake news online against her.
For those on Clinton’s team who think it did, Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser to Trump, told Fox News on Friday morning that “a little self-awareness would do for a team that is blaming everybody but themselves for this.”
In a speech on Thursday at a ceremony for retiring Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Clinton called on Congress to take action against the “epidemic of malicious fake news” that she said represents a “danger” to the “lives of ordinary people.”
“The epidemic of malicious fake news and false propaganda that flooded social media over the past year — it’s now clear the so-called fake news can have real-world consequences,” she said.
Conway told Fox News that “I take seriously what she's saying in terms of people spreading rumors or saying things that aren't true and possible harm coming to people.”
But she denounced the Clinton camp’s efforts to tie Trump or the Republican Party with the issue of fake news, calling it a “cottage industry” that must be stopped.
“The most fake piece of news I heard all along, up until Election Day and still hear from some people, is that Donald Trump couldn't win. How's that for fake news, misleading news?” she said. “The fake news certainly was that Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were all sewed up, that we couldn't bust through the blue wall.”
According to reports, hundreds of invented articles had surfaced which promoted Trump and slandered Clinton, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
This week, police said a gunman entered a pizzeria in Washington, DC, after he read online that it was tied to a pedophilia ring linked to the Clintons.
Clinton’s speech on Capital Hill on Thursday was the second public appearance she has made since suffering a crushing defeat at the hands of Trump in the election. In her first appearance after the defeat on November 16, Clinton expressed her disappointment of losing to Trump, saying there were times when she wanted to "curl up…and never leave the house again.”
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