Trump Immediately Drops ‘Lock Her Up’ Charade After 2016 Election

Contrary to his play-acting during the 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump is a longtime friend and admirer of the Clintons.

So, it should come as no surprise that he immediately dropped his insincere “lock her up” gimmick as soon as the fake wrestling match was over.

These are the kinds of “tough talking” quotes that many of his supporters cheered in the run-up to the election:

Donald Trump: Hillary ‘Was The Worst Secretary Of State In The History Of The US’ (VIDEO), NBC News, July 8, 2015

Trump Accuses Clinton of Helping China in Return for Cash, Fortune, June 22, 2016

Trump: ‘Hillary Clinton Has To Go To Jail’, CNN, Oct 13, 2016

Trump accuses Clinton of running a ‘criminal enterprise’, The Hill, Sept 8, 2016

Trump: If elected, I’ll appoint a special prosecutor to look into Clinton’s emails, Washington Post, October 9, 2016

Donald Trump: Hillary Clinton Will ‘Be in Jail’ if I’m Elected, The Daily Beast, April 13, 2017

Here is the first thing he said in his “victory” speech on election night, moments after becoming the “President-elect”:

TRUMP: Thank you. Thank you very much, everyone. Sorry to keep you waiting; complicated business; complicated. Thank you very much. I’ve just received a call from Secretary Clinton. She congratulated us — it’s about us — on our victory, and I congratulated her and her family on a very, very hard-fought campaign. I mean, she — she fought very hard. Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country. I mean that very sincerely. Now it’s time for America to bind the wounds of division; have to get together. To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people. It’s time. I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all Americans, and this is so important to me.

Then, in his first sit-down interview after being elected, he told Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes:

LESLIE STAHL: Are you going to ask for a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton over her emails? And are you, as you had said to her face, going to try and put her in jail?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do, I’m going to think about it. Um, I feel that I want to focus on jobs, I want to focus on healthcare, I want to focus on the border and immigration and doing a really great immigration bill. We want to have a great immigration bill. And I want to focus on all of these other things that we’ve been talking about.

STAHL: You– you know, you-

TRUMP: And get the country straightened away.

STAHL: You called her “crooked Hillary,” said you wanted to get in jail, your people in your audiences kept saying, “Lock ‘em up.”

TRUMP: Yeah. She did-

STAHL: Do you—

TRUMP: She did some bad things, I mean she did some bad things-

STAHL: I know, but a special prosecutor? You think you might…

TRUMP: I don’t want to hurt them. I don’t want to hurt them. They’re, they’re good people. I don’t want to hurt them. And I will give you a very, very good and definitive answer the next time we do 60 Minutes together.

Then at a rally in Michigan on December 9, 2016:

TRUMP: …But at the last moment I said, 9:00 in the evening, let’s go to Michigan, OK? Right? Because I heard my opponent had scheduled Michigan unexpectedly. It was like all of a sudden with President Obama and Michele and Bill and Hillary. And they are going to Michigan.

(Crowd Begins Booing and reportedly chanting “Lock Her Up!”)

TRUMP: No, it’s okay. No. Forget it. That plays great before the election. Now, we don’t care, right?

Here’s the video:

At the inaugural luncheon the following month (Jan 20, 2021), Trump said:

I was very honored– very, very honored– when I heard President Bill Clinton and Secretary Hillary Clinton was coming today, and I think it’s appropriate to say. And I’d like you to stand up. I’d like you to stand up.

[Standing ovation for the Clintons]

And honestly, there’s nothing more I can say, because I have a lot of respect for those two people.

Watch: