President Joe Biden sparked fury Tuesday night by suggesting Donald Trump should be in jail just 14 days out from the presidential election.
‘We gotta lock him up’, the 81-year-old president said at event in New Hampshire.
Biden appeared to realize what he said, and tried to correct himself by saying ‘we need to politically lock him up. Lock him out. That’s what we have to do.’
It comes after Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris takes care to try to shut down ‘lock him up’ chants that have popped up at her campaign rallies.
She routinely says to leave the matter up to the courts.
The chants clash with her campaign based in part on preserving democracy and long and order from what she calls the Trump threat – and is similar to the ‘lock her up’ chants at Trump’s 2016 rallies that Democrats continue to call out.
‘Lock him up’: President Joe Biden said at a New Hampshire campaign event that it was time to ‘lock him up’, stepping off message for the Harris campaign in describing Donald Trump
Trump has long centered his own campaign around contesting the criminal cases against him, and accuses rivals of practicing ‘lawfare’ against him.
He faces sentencing in September after his conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records, which could technically land him in jail, although many experts say the first-time white collar offender is likely to avoid doing jail time.
His son, Donald Trump Jr., teed off on Biden’s comments.
‘They’re not even hiding it. The lawfare against my dad was always about election interference!’ he posted on X.
Trump’s own campaign rhetoric has included multiple threats to go after people he calls the ‘enemy from within,’ including Senate candidate Adam Schiff.
He experienced a poll and campaign donation bump during his New York hush money trial, and has railed against ‘deranged’ special counsel Jack Smith bringing charges against him related to his January 6 election overturn effort.
Biden made the statement visiting a campaign office in Concord, New Hampshire
Biden was back out on the campaign trail on a day former President Barack Obama spoke to a large rally for Harris
Biden, who only occasionally jumps on the campaign trail after committing a string of gaffes, made the comment after saying Trump was talking about abolishing the Education Department.
‘This is a guy who also wants to replace every civil servant. Every single one. Things he has a right under the Supreme Court ruling on immunity to be able to if need be … to actually eliminate, physically eliminate, shoot, kill someone he believes to be a threat to him. I know this sounds bizarre. [If]I said this five years ago you’d lock me up – you gotta lock him up,’ he said.
‘Politically lock him up,’ he added.
Although Trump has repeatedly railed against his political opponents and threatened to use the machinery to government to go after them, he hasn’t spoken about being able to kill people who are a threat to him.
He continues to try to turn the Democrats’ own rhetoric against them.
‘If we lose this election, we may not have a country anymore,’ he said at his Doral golf club on Monday. ‘They say we may never have an election again in this country. This is where we’re going,’ he said.
Democrats have raised increasing concern about whether Trump will once again declare victory and refuse to accept the results of the election, as he did in 2020.
He was coy once again when asked at a suburban area McDonald’s drive-thru Saturday whether he would accept the election results no matter the outcome.
‘Yeah, sure, if it’s a fair election,’ Trump said. ‘I would always accept it. It’s got to be a fair election,’ he said.
He continue to call for a win that is ‘too big to rid’ – implying his rivals will cheat without offering evidence.
‘We gotta lock Joe up,’ a former Biden aide quipped to Axios, noting that the statement was politically unhelpful.
Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt called on the Harris campaign to condemn Biden’s ‘disgraceful’ remark.
‘Joe Biden just admitted the truth: he and Kamala’s plan all along has been to politically persecute their opponent President Trump because they can’t beat him fair and square. The Harris-Biden Admin is the real threat to democracy,’ she said.
