Wow: Hillary Clinton still blaming TikTok for Israel PR nightmare 

She’s back!  

Hillary Clinton is opining on a topic near and dear to her heart: the supposed misinformation spread by social media regarding all her favorite topics. This, from a political figure utterly convinced she would be accepted by all the world, and American voters in particular, if people stopped listening to social media and instead got all their news from the credentialed experts of the mainstream media. 

Recently, Clinton spoke at Israel Hayom’s summit to explain why she thinks people, especially young people — many of them Jewish Americans — have turned against Israel over the war in Gaza. Spoiler: She thinks it’s all TikTok’s fault. 

This is a very familiar refrain for Clinton, of course. When she lost the 2016 election, she blamed it all on Facebook — in particular, on Russian bots that supposedly flooded the platform with pro-Trump and anti-Clinton content. It’s part of the reason she concluded Donald Trump was an illegitimate president (her words). If people had trusted respectable news outlets, they wouldn’t have fallen for the lies of social media, which are polluting our democracy, according to Clinton. 

Of course, what we learned subsequently is that the impacts of Russian bots on Facebook was greatly exaggerated. But never mind, Hillary Clinton has found her go-to explanation for political outcomes she disagrees with. Here’s more of her remarks, in which she clearly applies the same script to declining support for Israel: 

“A lot of the challenge is with younger people. More than 50 percent of young people in America get their news from social media. Pause on that for a second: They are seeing short-form videos, some of them totally made up, some of them not at all  representing what they claim to be showing, and that’s where they get their information.” 

There’s so much wrong with this, I don’t even know where to start. 

First, the idea that social media evinces some bias, whereas traditional and legacy and mainstream media does not, is obviously false. The mainstream had their biases — it was a bias toward government action, and when it comes to foreign policy, a bias toward military intervention and against peace. Remember the Iraq War, when even liberal media largely marched in lockstep with the administration? The media has a bias toward action, and that means a bias toward interventionism. It’s also the preference of the credential elites whom mainstream media relies upon. 

Social media, by extension, is freewheeling and encompasses many other perspectives — some of which are wrong, or biased, or a malicious, sure. But look, in the year of our lord 2025, if you don’t have a plan for your message to prevail on social media, you don’t have a plan, period.  

Social media has won the attention wars. Most people will continue to get their news from YouTube, TikTok, X and Instagram. Those platforms may change over time, as there is remarkable competition in this space, but people are not going to go back to television and print journalism. And if they are consuming the programming made available via those formats, they are likely going to be consuming them on social media. Social media encompasses legacy media. There’s no way of getting around it. 

So what I suspect people like Hillary Clinton are really mad about is that people are consuming news sources that elites do not approve of, and they are reaching conclusions elites do not agree with. The fact is that many Americans, including many Jewish Americans, disagree with U.S. taxpayers funding Israel’s destruction of Gaza. They’ve reached that conclusion after educating themselves.  

That’s it! That’s the whole story. They’re not being manipulated or tricked. It’s the same story as Americans losing faith in the Iraq War, or the Vietnam War: The American people got tired of both those entanglements long before U.S. policymakers and experts soured on the conflicts. 

So don’t be mad at the messenger, Madame Secretary. If you want Americans to support your foreign policy, you have to sell it better. Stop whining about TikTok or other social media sites, and get in the game. 

And, by the way, if you’re interested in how social media and big tech are impacting society and free speech, and you happen to live in Washington, D.C., I’m participating in a debate next week, sponsored by Reason magazine. You can go online for tickets.  

It’s going to be me and Elizabeth Nolan Brown vs. Ryan Grim and Emily Jashinsky of Breaking Points, whom longtime viewers will remember from their days on Rising Fridays. Should be a great event, and it will appear, of course, on YouTube, after it’s filmed. 

Robby Soave is co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising” and a senior editor for Reason Magazine. This column is an edited transcription of his daily commentary.