President Joe Biden has declared that Donald Trump should be “locked up” – before quickly correcting himself.
The president made the controversial remark while at the Democratic Party‘s Concord, New Hampshire, headquarters on Tuesday where he warned that democracy hangs in the balance as Trump continues to close in on Kamala Harris in the national polls.
“I know this sounds bizarre. If I said this five years ago you’d lock me up,” Biden said, claiming that the Supreme Court’s July presidential immunity ruling would mean Trump, a convicted felon, could “eliminate” his enemies.
“We gotta lock him up,” he said to applause, before leaving a roughly five-second pause and then quickly backtracking.
“Politically lock him up,” Biden clarified.
Softening his rhetoric further, the president added: “Lock him out, that’s what we’ve got to do.”
With less than two weeks until Election Day, a current Biden Administration official appeared unfazed by the president’s remarks.
“For better or worse, no one is listening to him anymore and his words have little power and less reach,” the staffer allegedly texted Axios reporter Alex Thompson.
“It’s a blip. Gone in any meaningful way by mid-day tomorrow if it makes it that long.”
However, a former Biden aide said the incumbent’s calls to lock up Trump could harm Harris’s campaign.
“Noting this could be politically unhelpful to Harris, a former Biden admin official texts me: ‘we gotta lock Joe up’,” Thompson said in a post on X.
The Trump campaign was quick to condemn Biden’s remarks about locking him up as “disgraceful”.
“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,” Trump spokesperson 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.”
Biden’s comments are reminiscent of Trump’s calls to lock up his 2016 presidential opponent Hillary Clinton, just weeks before Election Day.
Trump called for the Democratic nominee to be imprisoned while making remarks on three different occasions in October 2016. In a Fox News interview this June, the Republican presidential nominee then falsely denied ever having done so.
Now, Harris is repeatedly confronted by crowds calling for Trump – who was convicted of 34 felony charges in May – to be jailed.
Rallygoers in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Friday began chanting “lock him up” after Harris described Trump as an “unserious” man.
“The courts are going to take care of that,” Harris responded.
Biden’s comments came after Trump set off alarm bells when he suggested deploying the military to handle “radical liberals” and the so-called “enemy within” on Election Day.
“This is a guy who also wants to replace every civil servant, every single one,” the president said.
“Thinks he has a right under the Supreme Court ruling on immunity to be able, if need be, if it was the case, to actually eliminate – physically eliminate, shoot, kill – someone who is… he believes would be a threat to him.”
The Supreme Court issued a ruling in July that presidents are immune from criminal prosecution for official acts carried out while in office. In the dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor warned that, under the ruling, if an incumbent “orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival” they would be “immune.”
