Trump claims he didn’t say ‘lock her up’ about Hillary Clinton
Presumptive 2024 Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said that prosecuting Hillary Clinton would “have been a terrible thing” in an interview that aired Sunday on Fox News.
Trump was questioned by “Fox and Friends Weekend” co-hosts Will Cain, Rachel Campos-Duffy and Pete Hegseth in the former president’s first sit-down interview since a jury of 12 New Yorkers Manhattan convicted him Thursday on all 34 counts in his falsified business records case. Trump distanced himself from rallying cries to prosecute failed 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, explaining why he refrained to do so.
“You famously said regarding Hillary Clinton, ‘Lock her up.’ You declined to do that as president,” Cain said.
“I beat her. It’s easier when you win. And I felt — and I could have done it. But I felt it would have been a terrible thing,” Trump said. “And then this happened to me. And so, I may feel differently about it. I can’t tell you I can, I’m not sure I can answer the question.”
“Hillary Clinton — I didn’t say ‘lock her up,’ but the people would all say, ‘lock her up, lock her up.’ Then we won,” the Republican candidate continued. “And I say, and I’ve said pretty openly, I’d say, ‘alright, come on, just relax. Let’s go, we gotta make our country great.’ And it would have been, think of it, you lock up the wife of a president of the United States….”
“If they were to lock you up over $130,000, an accounting thing, and she actually did—” Campos-Duffy interjected.
“And a perfectly stated accounting thing. But, you know, people also say, ‘Can you bring the country together?’ And the answer is yes. Success will bring the country together because I had it together. Before the China virus came in, I had it together. We really had it together. And, and it would have stayed. I think it would have stayed. Everybody was, everybody was doing better. The country was doing better than it had ever done, and we’re going back to same policies and then some.”
During Trump’s Manhattan trial, Clinton alleged on Morning Joe that Trump’s $130,000 payment to pornographic actress Stormy Daniels was a form of “election interference.” Despite this, the Democratic candidate was involved in her own unreported payments made in an apparent effort to influence the 2016 election. Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) paid a $113,000 fine for failing to report that the now-debunked Steele dossier was funded through the Perkins Coie law firm.
