A Look Back At The Time Chelsea Clinton Met Kate Middleton

A major part of politics is getting along with important people from other countries. In December 2014, William, Prince of Wales, and Catherine, Princess of Wales (then the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge) were on a brief U.S. tour and rubbed elbows with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her daughter Chelsea Clinton, and Chelsea's husband, Marc Mezvinksy. The four of them all attended an event on wildlife conservation at the British Consulate in New York City.

While at the event, Kate Middleton and Prince William congratulated Chelsea. A few months prior, in September 2014, Chelsea had given birth to her and Mezvinksy's first child, Charlotte. When the group met, Kate was pregnant with her and Prince William's second child — who, although the public didn't know at the time, would also be named Charlotte — so Chelsea and Mezvinksy congratulated her and William as well.

Hillary also told Kate a story from Chelsea's childhood. According to Hello!, Hillary said that she used to sing to Chelsea when she was young. However, little Chelsea once told her, "No sing, no sing."

The Telegraph shared a video from the 2014 conservation event on their YouTube channel. In it, camera flashes popped like lightning as Catherine, Princess of Wales and William, Prince of Wales entered the event. They were all smiles as they shook hands and talked with Hillary and Chelsea Clinton.

At the time, Chelsea and Kate each only had one child. Their lives have looked somewhat parallel since, as of 2024, they each have three children. Another parallel happened a few months before Chelsea and Kate's meeting. After giving birth to Charlotte in September 2014, Chelsea, her husband, Marc Mezvinsky, her mother, Hillary, and her father, former President Bill Clinton, posed for pictures outside the hospital with the newborn Charlotte. E! News remarked how similar the photoshoot was to photos taken when William and Kate posed for post-birth photos with Prince George.

In 2018, political journalist Amy Chozick published "Chasing Hillary: Ten Years, Two Presidential Campaigns and One Intact Glass Ceiling" about Hillary's presidential aspirations (later editions of the book included the subtitle "On the Trail of the First Woman President Who Wasn't"). At the time of the book's publishing, two of Chelsea's three children had been born. "Chasing Hillary" included speculation that the similarities between the Chelsea and Kate post-birth photos were intentional: "Chelsea's press aide told me they'd studied how Britain's royal family had handled Princess Kate's pregnancy to devise a media strategy."

Both Chelsea Clinton and Catherine, Princess of Wales wore similar blue dresses for the photo ops with their newborns, as seen in photos shared by the Daily Mail from after Kate Middleton gave birth to Prince George of Wales and after Chelsea gave birth to her eldest two children, Charlotte and Aidan. Although Chelsea didn't seem to respond to the claim that she recreated Kate's photos, she called the validity of Chozick's other claims into question on X, formerly Twitter.

Chelsea retweeted the link to a "Chasing Hillary" preview in The New York Times and tagged Chozick, saying she didn't prematurely "[pop] the Champagne" hours before Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in the 2016 election. "I would have been happy to tell you that if you'd asked, which you didn't," Chelsea said. "Looking forward to the correction once you fact check. Thanks!" That line in the NYT preview was corrected, but that wasn't all.

In subsequent tweets over the next few days, Chelsea denied more of Chozick's statements. In another tweet, Chelsea addressed Chozick, saying, "Everything I've heard thus far that you write about me didn't happen. We clearly have different definitions of nonfiction." When someone questioned Chelsea and said they trusted Chozick's fact checker, Chelsea replied that she had never been contacted by a fact checker. Because of that, claims that Chelsea and her team tried to recreate Kate's photos may not be true.