Trump Absurdly Claims To Hannity He Thought ‘It Was Terrible’ When Crowds Chanted ‘Lock Her Up!’
Former President Donald Trump absurdly claimed to Sean Hannity that he “thought it was terrible” when his rally crowds would start chanting “Lock her up!” — despite copious evidence to the contrary.
Despite a recent effort to distance himself from them through lying, Trump has freely enjoyed chants of “Lock her up!” since the 2016 campaign — which his crowds were still chanting just last week. In an interview with Fox & Friends Weekend, Trump falsely claimed, “Hillary Clinton — I didn’t say lock her up, but the people said lock her up, lock her up.”
Hannity scored an exclusive interview with Trump, to which he devoted Wednesday night’s edition of Fox News Channel’s Hannity.
In one lengthy exchange, Hannity tried several times to get Trump to pledge not to exact “retribution” if he wins, but Trump kept wandering off-topic.
Eventually, a reluctant Trump said to Hannity, “I know you want me to say something so nice,” and went into a digression about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and UFC and said a lot of things that were not “I promise not to do retribution”:
HANNITY: Will you pledge to restore equal justice, equal application of our laws, end this practice of weaponization? Is that a promise you’re going to make?
TRUMP: Well, you have to do it. But it’s awful.
Look, I know you want me to say something so nice.
HANNITY: No, I don’t want you to say. I’m asking.
TRUMP: But I don’t want to look naive.
HANNITY: I don’t want to…
TRUMP: What they have done to the Republican Party, they want to arrest on no crime. They want to arrest the person that won the nomination in a landslide. There was nobody even close, in a landslide, the person that got millions of votes, more votes than any other sitting president in history in the last election, the person that won an election that he wasn’t expected to win against Hillary Clinton in 2016.
They want to arrest that person on no crime. They want to arrest. There was no crime. There was no criminality. There was no crime. And you can go back to all of these legal scholars. They can’t believe what’s happening. Some of them don’t even like me. And they’re saying, this is a very, very dangerous thing that’s happening.
No, we can’t let this happen. And I will do everything in my power not to let — but there’s tremendous criminality here. What they’re doing to me, if it’s going to continue, we’re really not going to have much of a country left. It’s really — it is weaponization. You call it lawfare. You call it — some people call it just warfare.
But it is weaponization of the election. And we’re talking about, I think, the most important election in the history of our country. This will go down, I believe, as the most important election in the history of our country. We can’t have this stuff go on, because you know what?
When Biden goes out, everyone says, bye-bye, and then he gets indicted two days later, and they go after him? The country doesn’t want that. And you know what? They didn’t want it with Hillary Clinton either. I thought it was terrible. I’d make a speech, everyone would say, “Lock her up, lock her up, lock her up.”
And I was at a UFC fight the other night with Dana White, who is a fantastic…
HANNITY: You got a terrible reception.
(LAUGHTER)
TRUMP: Yes.
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: I did — well, I’m kidding.
TRUMP: You better tell them…
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: I’m kidding. I’m not telling Dana that.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: People don’t understand, sometimes, sarcasm.
HANNITY: Yes. No, it was — we played it. It was pretty overwhelming.
(CROSSTALK)
TRUMP: It was 25,000 people, whatever they had going, absolute — there wasn’t…
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Right after your conviction.
TRUMP: But you know what?
What I watched, and it was very — some of the fighters, two, in particular, hated their opponent. And this went on for months. The fight was broadcast out.
HANNITY: Sure.
TRUMP: And they announced the fight. And the hatred was real. It was the real deal. These people have — they have a lot of hatred. And they hated.
And then the fight ended, and they’re hugging and kissing in the ring. They’re down, sitting on the — they’re hugging and kissing. It’s like nothing happened. It happened on two fights. There was tremendous animosity between the two fighters and the other two fighters. And, at the end, that’s what happened.
And, in a certain way, after we won against Hillary, people would say, “Lock her up, lock her up.” And I said, wouldn’t it be terrible if I locked up the wife of the president of the United States, former, and locked up the former secretary of state? It’s a terrible thing.
You’re starting off, you want to bring the country together. I want to bring the country together.
Watch above via Fox News Channel’s Hannity.
