Biden turns tables on Trump: 'Lock him up' — politically
"Lock her up" chants that became popular at former President Donald Trump's campaign rallies in 2016 got flipped around Tuesday by President Joe Biden, who told campaign workers in New Hampshire on Tuesday, "We’ve got to lock him up" then added after a brief pause, "politically."
Biden warned the workers that democracy is on the ballot this year and to think about what the country will look like if Trump wins.
Biden said Trump believes the Supreme Court's recent presidential immunity ruling allows him 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. “We’ve got to lock him up.”
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After a pause, he clarified: “Politically lock him up. Lock him out. That’s what we have to do.”
Biden has been no stranger to political gaffes during his decades-long career. A former Biden administration official told Axios reporter Alex Thompson in a text message: "we gotta lock Joe up.”
A current Biden administration official took a different opinion.
"For better or worse, no one is listening to him anymore and his words have little power and less reach. It’s a blip. Gone in any meaningful way by mid-day tomorrow if it makes it that long," the official told Thompson.
Trump has falsely insisted he never said, “lock her up," but he has uttered the phrase at an October 2016 rally and also on the debate stage when he said: “Hillary Clinton has to go to jail, OK? She has to go to jail.”
Watch the clip below or at this link.