Donald Trump denied being the one to say “Lock her up” in reference to 2016 political rival Hillary Clinton, he told Fox News in an interview broadcast Sunday. “Hillary Clinton, I didn’t say ‘lock her up,’ but the people would all say ‘lock her up, lock her up,’ OK — then we won,” Trump said. “And I said pretty openly, I say, ‘All right, come on, just relax. Let’s go, we’re going to make our country great.’”
That doesn’t mean he wasn’t open to the idea, he explained earlier in the segment, even though he didn’t follow through. “It’s easier when you win,” Trump told the hosts. “And they all said ‘lock her up,’ and I felt, and I could have done it. But I felt it would have been a terrible thing. And then this happened to me. And so I may feel differently about it.”
It’s true that Trump’s supporters often led the “Lock her up” call throughout his campaign run, but the former president didn’t mind agreeing with crowds from time to time. In October 2016 he told one group, “Lock her up is right,” and at a 2017 rally in Alabama, he appeared to blame his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for Clinton’s continued freedom.
Elsewhere in the interview, Trump admitted that his hush money trial in New York was difficult for his family. Of his wife Melania Trump, he explained, “She’s fine, but I think it’s very hard for her,” before he added, “in many ways, it’s tougher on them [his family] than it is me.”
Calls to imprison Clinton began after it was revealed that she used a private email server to send personal emails during her time as secretary of state under former President Barack Obama. Trump currently faces up to four years in prison after being convicted of using $130,000 in campaign funds to silence adult entertainment star Stormy Daniels, with whom he had an affair, in order to influence the 2016 election.
In 2018, the New York Times reported that Trump wanted to ask the Justice Department to prosecute both Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey, but he was dissuaded by others in his administration. White Hosue lawyer Don McGahn told Trump he didn’t have the authorization to pursue prosecution in the first place. McGahn asked White House staff to write up a memo that included the possible repercussions for attempting to do so, including impeachment.
Watch an excerpt from this weekend’s Fox News interview with Donald Trump in the video above.
