President Joe Biden, who has long sought to distance himself from the relentless and malicious prosecution of his political opponent, told a crowd of supporters in New Hampshire that Donald Trump ought to be locked up.
Biden’s comments show exactly why Kamala Harris and her campaign had hoped to keep the president off the campaign trail and firmly locked up in his basement.
The man who has weaponized every department under his purview during his lone term as president began by warning voters that the Republican candidate wants to abolish the Department of Education and “replace every civil servant.”
The crazy got kicked up to 11 when Biden asserted the Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity meant Trump believed he could “physically eliminate, shoot, kill someone he believes to be a threat to him.”
That’s the kind of rhetoric that leads to assassination attempts against political opponents.
“I know this sounds bizarre,” Biden continued. “It sounds like (if) I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up.”
“We gotta lock him up.”
President Joe Biden says the quiet part out loud for Democrats about former President Donald Trump: “We gotta lock him up”
He said this just now on the campaign trail in New Hampshire pic.twitter.com/63sdel3eyr
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) October 22, 2024
The president’s comments were clearly an off-script remark and a play on the words he had just spoken. (I’m just going to come out and make that point since the fact-checkers will have cleaned this comment up on his behalf within a few hours, I’m quite certain.)
But it’s the kind of talk we’ve grown accustomed to. Incredibly reminiscent of his 2012 comments about Mitt Romney “unchaining Wall Street” – “They’re going to put y’all back in chains.”
Sensing the blunder he had just made, Biden paused for nearly five seconds before adding the disclaimer “politically.”
“Politically lock him up,” he said, as the crowd was already cheering the idea of Trump in a jail cell.
Harris has spent time on the campaign trail trying to tamp down supporters who engage in “lock him up” chants.
“Well, hold on, you know what? The courts are going to handle that part of it,” she said at a rally in Wisconsin this past August. “What we’re going to do is beat them in November.”
Biden undid that effort in no time, during a rare stump speech on behalf of Harris. It’s almost like he’s trying to sabotage his replacement at every corner.
The president has insisted throughout his term that he has nothing to do with the politically motivated prosecutions Trump has faced time and time again in an attempt to keep him out of the White House.
“Because you’ll notice I have never once, not one single time, suggested to the Justice Department what they should do or not do, relative to bringing a charge or not bringing a charge,” Biden said at a press conference in 2023. “I’m honest.”
Was he being honest then, or accidentally honest now?
Trump has respectfully disagreed that Biden’s hands are clean on the matter.
“They are in total conjunction with the White House and the DOJ, just so you understand,” Trump said regarding the cases he’s faced. “This is all done by Biden and his people.”
Trump was found guilty in May by a jury in Manhattan on 34 counts of falsifying business records. These charges stemmed from a hush money payment made by Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, during the 2016 election. His sentencing on the matter is set for three weeks after the election.
Additionally, the former president is confronting federal charges in D.C. and state charges in Georgia concerning his efforts to contest his loss to Biden in the 2020 election. And Special Counsel Jack Smith is appealing the dismissal of the Florida federal case against him for the alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Biden’s comment, regardless of intent, will no doubt reignite Trump and his supporters’ efforts to suggest it is the current president, not the former, who has weaponized the Justice Department and friendly Democrat prosecutors against his political opponents.
Update – 7:30 p.m. Eastern:
The Trump campaign has now responded to Biden’s remarks:
“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. We call on Kamala Harris to condemn Joe Biden’s disgraceful remark.” — Karoline Leavitt, Trump Campaign National Press Secretary
