Joe Biden, when asked to comment on what Donald Trump would do if re-elected, replied, “we’ve got to lock him up,” before quickly adding, “politically lock him up.” The president made the comments Tuesday while speaking to Democratic campaign workers in New Hampshire.
Biden warned that democracy is at stake in the Nov. 5 election and that Americans should think about what will happen if Trump wins. “He is talking about doing away with the entire Department of Education,” Biden said. “He means it… this guy also wants to replace every civil servant, every single one.”
Biden also referenced the recent Supreme Court ruling that yielded virtual immunity for the president as another reason he’s worried about a second Trump presidency. Biden has stated he would not use such powers to his own advantage.
The president said that Trump thinks he has the right to “to actually eliminate, physically eliminate – shoot, kill – someone who is, he believes, to be a threat to him.”
“If I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up,” Biden said, before repeating one of Trump’s most-used catchphrases: “We’ve got to lock him up.”
After a moment, Biden added, “Politically lock him up.”
It wasn’t immediately clear what that would mean in this context, though it appeared most likely Biden looking to distance himself from Trump-style rhetoric and not attach himself to calls for Trump’s arrest and conviction.
During his first presidential run in 2016, Trump repeatedly spoke to crowds who chanted “Lock her up” when his rival Hillary Clinton was mentioned. Though Trump has denied leading such chants, he did little to nothing to quell them.
“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 told Fox News in June. “And I said pretty openly, I say, ‘All right, come on, just relax. Let’s go, we’re going to make our country great.’”
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.” At a 2017 rally in Alabama, he appeared to blame his own attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for Clinton’s continued freedom.
Some supporters at Harris rallies this year have chanted “Lock him up” in reference to Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, along with the other charges he continues to face pending trial. Harris does not entertain the chants, instead insisting that “the courts are going to handle that.”
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