(Headline USA) President Joe Biden emerged briefly on the campaign trail Tuesday to encourage voters to lock up former President Donald Trump—“politically.”
The 81-year-old made the comment during a stop at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s headquarters, USA Today reported.
“I know this sounds bizarre,” Biden said. “It sounds like if I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up. We’ve got to lock [Trump] up.”
Realizing his error, Biden quickly tried to backtrack: “Politically lock him up,” he added. “Lock him out. That’s what we have to do.”
The Democrat went on to warn that “our democracy is at stake” in November’s election.
“Think about it. Think about what would happen if Donald Trump wins this election,” he said.
Just moments earlier, Biden insisted that unity and bipartisanship were important to America’s political future.
“We’ve gotta get back to the days where you actually can talk to the other team,” Biden said.
Even CNN admitted Biden’s comments were, at the very least, “profoundly stupid.”
CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams pointed out Biden’s rhetoric “played directly into the central point that Donald Trump and folks around him have made, which is that the country has this overweening Justice Department top-down from the president going after its rivals.”
A former Biden administration official told Axios reporter Alex Thompson afterwards that Biden’s comments would more than likely hurt Vice President Kamala Harris.
“We gotta lock Joe up,” the official said, according to Thompson.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre attempted to dial back the remarks by gaslighting the public in typical form.
Karine Jean-Pierre claims Biden didn't actually mean "lock him up" when he said "we've gotta lock him up," referring to President Trump.
They're all a bunch of corrupt, desperate liars. pic.twitter.com/jpJWbh0Xz3
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) October 23, 2024
Harris, however, has also been using increasingly inflammatory rhetoric about Trump as Election Day closes in.
This week, she insisted that Trump was becoming “increasingly unhinged and unstable,” and that he would be a dictator if elected in November.
“We know what Donald Trump wants,” she said on Wednesday. “He wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be, what do the American people want?”
