US President Joe Biden told New Hampshire Democrats today that “we gotta lock him up”, referring to former president Donald Trump, before quickly adding, “politically lock him up”.
The president was co-opting a 2016 Trump campaign line that referred to Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton – rhetoric that this year’s nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, has discouraged on the campaign trail.
Describing some of Trump’s plans for a second term, Biden said, “I know this sounds bizarre – it sounds like if I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up. We gotta lock him up.”
As the audience applauded, Biden caught himself, adding, “Politically lock him up. Lock him out. That’s what we have to do.”
Harris has shut down “lock him up” chants aimed at her GOP rival, telling her supporters at multiple rallies, “The courts are gonna handle that. We’re going to beat him in November.”
The remark was a departure for Biden, who has typically tried to avoid any hint of interference in the legal proceedings against Trump.
The former president has claimed, without evidence, that the Justice Department has criminally pursued him and his allies for political purposes, while suggesting that he would politicise the department should he return to the Oval Office.
The Trump campaign quickly seized on the president’s comments.
“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,” campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement on Tuesday local time.
“The Harris-Biden Admin is the real threat to democracy. We call on Kamala Harris to condemn Joe Biden’s disgraceful remark.”
Trump this year has falsely claimed he discouraged his supporters’ “lock her up” chants about Clinton during the 2016 campaign, saying that he would respond, “easy, just easy”.
Trump earlier this year became the first former president in American history and the first major-party presidential nominee to be convicted of a felony when a Manhattan jury found him guilty of all 34 charges of falsifying business records in his hush money case.
Trump faces three other criminal cases to which he’s pleaded not guilty: two over election interference, one in Georgia and one in federal court, and another federal case related to his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Trump has falsely claimed that Biden and his administration were behind the state-level cases brought against him.
During an interview with NBC today, Harris declined to say whether she would consider pardoning Trump, saying she wouldn’t “get into those hypotheticals”.
Pressed on whether she believes a pardon “could help bring American together,” Harris said: “Let me tell you what’s going to help us move on: I get elected president United States”.