In early May 2026, social media users shared videos allegedly featuring audio of former U.S. President Bill Clinton criticizing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's House and Senate committee testimony from late April. One video (archived) caption claimed Clinton said Hegseth's appearances "blew up in his face," while another clip (archived) said the former president spoke about the defense secretary's efforts resulting in "military collapse."
Snopes readers emailed to ask about one of the videos. One wanted to know whether Clinton truly said Hegseth's words "blew up in his face," while another asked whether the video was generated with artificial intelligence. Facebook and YouTube comments indicated users believed Clinton genuinely addressed the testimony on a podcast or during an interview.
(Global News Analysis/Facebook)
In short, the audio was fake. As the one reader assumed, the videos used AI-generated vocals along with AI-created images of Clinton.
If Clinton had addressed Hegseth's testimony, journalists with reputable outlets would have reported his remarks. Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo did not locate any such reports.
Snopes previously contacted a Clinton representative for a statement regarding users sharing similar videos with inauthentic audio, including for an article about Clinton allegedly criticizing President Donald Trump's remarks about Pope Leo XIV. We have not heard back.
Researching the AI-generated audio
According to search engine queries above, the videos with the fake Clinton audio first appeared on the Global News Analysis and US Prime Report Facebook pages in early May. YouTube users also shared the videos.
One of the videos was titled "Most People DON'T REALIZE Hegseth Testimony Just BLEW UP in His Face!!! I Bill Clinton"; the other was "Trump LOST IT as CNN EXPOSES Hegseth's MILITARY COLLAPSE!!! Bill Clinton."
We sent messages to the two Facebook pages to ask questions, including about the AI tool used to create the content, and will update this article if we receive further information.
A scan of the videos' still images with Google's SynthID Detector found users generated the fake images with AI. Google Gemini said, "Analysis indicates that most or all of the content was edited or generated using Google AI." (When a user uploads an image to Gemini and asks for a SynthID scan, the AI tool looks for an invisible watermark added only to Google-created AI images.)
The audio exhibited clear signs of inauthenticity. For example, beginning around the 3:40 mark of the "blew up in his face" video, the fake Clinton voice says, "The president commands but Congress funds, Congress declares and Congess oversees." In the very next breath, the AI audio changes to a very different-sounding voice and then transitions back into the former voice with the words, "That's not a technicality. That's the whole ballgame."
For further reading, we previously investigated the authenticity of an image showing Clinton and Trump cuddling in bed.