claim: Hillary Clinton said women voted for Donald Trump because they "caved" to pressure from the men around them.
origin: In September 2017, a purported quote from Hillary Clinton began spreading widely on Facebook in which the former Democratic presidential candidate appears to claim that women who voted for Donald Trump did so under pressure from the men around them:Â < Women voted against me because they caved in to pressure from their husbands, fathers, boyfriends and male bosses. > This is not, in fact, a direct quote from Clinton; it is instead an oversimplified version of something she said during an interview with National Public Radio that was published on 12 September 2017. Â (The relevant portion of this interview, which can be heardÂ here, starts at 3:10.)Â Interviewer Rachel Martin asks Clinton about whether she believes that sexism played a role in her defeat to Donald Trump, and if she thinks this might be because Clinton failed to inspire them. During her response to this question, Clinton recounts a conversation with Facebookâ€™s Sheryl Sandberg: < â€¦Sheryl ended this really sobering conversation by saying that â€œWomen will have no empathy for you, because they will be under tremendous pressure â€”Â and Iâ€™m talking principally about white women â€” tremendous pressure from fathers and husbands and boyfriends and male employers not to vote for the girl.â€ > NPRâ€™s audio of the interview skips to another question at this point, but the transcript continues with Clinton observing: < And we saw a lot of that during the primaries from Sanders supporters, really quite vile attacks online against women who spoke out for me, as I say, one of my biggest support groups, Pantsuit Nation, literally had to become a private site because there was so much sexism directed their way. So I knew going in that this would be a hurdle for me. > Earlier in the interview, Clinton noted: â€œI didnâ€™t win the vote of white women.â€ The quote that spread widely on Facebook should not be attributed to Hillary Clinton, because she didnâ€™t say those exact words and was quoting someone else to begin with â€” and she pointedly did not use the word â€œcavedâ€. Neither did Clinton speak in such absolute terms about the dynamics at play among female voters orÂ state that pressure from men was a motivating factor for all women who voted for Donald Trump, although she also did not offer any alternative explanations for why she lost among white women in particular.