No, Sen. John Kennedy did not argue with Hillary Clinton during Senate hearing in 2025

A rumor that circulated online in November 2025 claimed Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana had embarrassed U.S. Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton during a Senate hearing after she attempted to “silence” him. Snopes readers emailed us to ask whether the rumor was true.

For example, on Nov. 10, a user shared (archived) the story to a Facebook page titled David Attenborough Fans. The post, which displayed photos of Clinton and Kennedy talking, began as follows: 

“Hillary Clinton Tries to Silence Senator Kennedy – What Happens Next Will Shock You”

The tension in the chamber was palpable even before Hillary Clinton sat down. Her voice was icy as she leaned into the microphone, telling Senator Kennedy that his questions were “outside this committee.”

Kennedy’s response? A calculating smile and a series of receipts that would make history.

(Facebook user Ryan Maniaci)

Other Facebook and YouTube users shared the same claim. Some of the posts making the claim featured links in top comments leading to articles hosted on WordPress blogs, such as one supposedly authored by someone named Cristiano Messi.

However, the claim about Clinton and Kennedy amounted to fiction.

Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo found no news media outlets reporting about Clinton and Kennedy’s supposed argument, nor was there any proof Clinton had recently testified at a Senate hearing. Prominent news media outlets would have widely reported this rumor, if true, given Clinton’s prominent name recognition in American politics.

Rather, whoever authored the story fabricated the entire tale, likely aiming to earn advertising revenue on websites linked from the aforementioned Facebook posts. Such rumors are generally produced using artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, Midjourney and Sora to generate text, images and videos. 

When these types of posts go viral, other users generally begin sharing similar stories, hoping to capitalize on its success. Recently, Kennedy has been the target of such posts. Snopes has reported on a similar AI-generated rumor claiming that Kennedy had won an argument with Democratic leaders on C-SPAN.