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Conservative group buys Snapchat filter to mock Hillary Clinton at Benghazi hearing

Conservative group buys Snapchat filter to mock Hillary Clinton at Benghazi hearing

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The snaps are coming from inside the hearing room

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Hillary Clinton is testifying today to the House Select Committee on Benghazi about the 2012 attacks on a US compound in Libya. She is also being questioned about her use of a personal email address while serving as secretary of state, a fact that was uncovered during earlier investigations into the incident in Benghazi. The testimony is being reported on and followed raptly by many, but for those who want a closer look, there is a solution, as always, in the form of social media.

Anticipating the shareability of the moment, Conservative group Judicial Watch created a Snapchat geofilter — a location-specific graphic that the app's users can add to their snaps — to be used inside the Longworth hearing room. (Related: I guess people are allowed to send snaps from Congressional hearings?)

The filter (possibly designed in Microsoft Publisher) quips, "Warning: This message will disappear — just like Hillary Clinton's emails." All things considered, it's a pretty good burn. Except for the fact that Clinton herself made the exact same joke at a campaign rally this August:

Geofilters are sometimes ugly and often inaccurate (there's a McDonalds-sponsored one that works from inside my apartment for some reason), but this appears to be the first major instance in which one has been used with blatant political subtext. A representative from Snapchat confirmed to The Verge that the filter was paid for by Judicial Watch and noted that it will be available to Snapchat users in Washington, DC until 4PM this afternoon.

If we've learned anything today, it's that Snapchat can now be counted as one of many political battlegrounds among social media platforms, and that there is truly only one Snapchat-oriented joke to be made about Hillary Clinton's emails.


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