President Joe Biden on Tuesday echoed language former President Donald Trump has used in the past, saying of the former president that “we gotta lock him up.”
Speaking at a campaign event in New Hampshire, Biden said Trump’s policies are so “bizarre” and dangerous that if he’d warned about them five years ago “you’d lock me up.”
“We gotta lock him up,” Biden said to applause from the small crowd before he appeared to catch himself and added, “politically lock him up.”
“Lock him out,” Biden continued. “That’s what we have to do.”
A White House official later said that Biden’s two immediate clarifications — specifying “politically” locking up Trump and locking him “out” — are how the president’s comments should be interpreted. Biden was speaking to how voters should think about the stakes of the election, the official added.
The Trump campaign responded Tuesday night by challenging Vice President Kamala Harris to condemn Biden’s remark.
“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 press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
“The Harris-Biden Admin is the real threat to democracy. We call on Kamala Harris to condemn Joe Biden’s disgraceful remark,” she added.
Steven Cheung, a Trump campaign spokesman, also criticized the remarks on X.
“President Trump is the only candidate who was shot in the head in a failed assassination attempt,” Cheung said, referring to the July 13 shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“What a piece of s— Biden is,” Cheung added.
Both Biden and Harris have condemned political violence in the wake of a pair of attempts to assassinate Trump.
Biden’s comments sparked backlash from other Trump allies.
Charlie Kirk, founder of the conservative activist group Turning Point USA, said on X: “This is the ‘tell’ as to why the Democrat machine has been feverishly working to imprison Trump. It’s all been intentional.”
Biden’s remarks introduce a distraction for the Harris campaign at a critical phase in a razor-close race, and they come when she is already making the calculated decision not to appear with him on the trail before Election Day.
At her rallies, Harris has typically shut down “lock him up” chants directed at Trump, saying the courts would handle that.
Trump was convicted in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records in a New York state case. His sentencing is scheduled for next month after the election. Federal prosecutors led
