Former President Donald Trump was brutally fact-checked after claiming during an appearance on Fox that he never said "Lock her up!" about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his 2016 presidential opponent.
Trump appeared on Fox and Friends on Sunday days after becoming the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes. A New York jury last week found him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels to illegally influence the 2016 election. His sentencing is set for July 11.
Fox host Will Cain got the ball rolling when he asked Trump about the "Lock her up chant," noting that Trump ultimately "declined to do that as president."
Trump responded with a blatant lie:
“I beat her. It’s easier when you win. They always said, ‘Lock her up.’ And I could have done it, but I felt it would have been a terrible thing. And then this happened to me so I may feel differently about it. I'm not sure I can answer the question."
"I never said 'Lock her up.' The people said 'Lock her up.' Then I won and I said pretty openly, 'Come on, let's relax, let's make our country great.' I wouldn't think of it, [locking up] the wife of a president of the United States."
You can hear what Trump said in the video below.
But Trump has issued numerous "Lock her up" calls against Clinton since the 2016 election cycle, notably during his rallies and public events when he's encouraged audience members to chant the phrase.
Trump notoriously invited Russia to hack Clinton's emails, asking the Kremlin to find "the 30,000 emails that are missing" from the personal server she used during her tenure as Secretary of State.
Her use of a private email server when she was Secretary of State was the subject of intense scrutiny. The emails were retrieved—not deleted as Republican rhetoric continues to claim. No charges were filed against Clinton as it was deemed a procedural issue and not criminal.
By contrast, multiple members of the Trump administration were cited for using private servers, unsecured electronic devices, and public apps for official White House communication.
Progressive journalist Aaron Rupar pointed out several instances when Trump has repeated the "Lock her up" chant, particularly during the 2020 election cycle.
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@atrupar/X
Aaron Blake, a political reporter for The Washington Post, also recalled several times Trump has said the chant.
And the liberal news website Mediaite posted a supercut of Trump saying "Lock her up" on numerous occasions.
Trump was swiftly called out.
So committed has Trump been to his narrative that Clinton has committed crimes and conspired against him that he once filed a lawsuit alleging Clinton and others "rigged" the 2016 election.
Trump initially sought $70 million in damages from Clinton and 30 defendants for conspiring to “weave a false narrative” during the 2016 election that Trump and his campaign were colluding with Russian operatives to win the presidential race.
However, in January 2023 a judge with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida imposed nearly $1 million in sanctions on Trump and his legal team for filing a "frivolous" lawsuit.
In his order, Judge John Middlbrooks said Trump is "a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries," adding he is a "mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process, and... cannot be seen as a litigant blindly following the advice of a lawyer."
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