Biden’s ‘lock him up’ remark about Trump was ‘profoundly stupid thing’ to say: CNN analyst

CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams argued on Wednesday that President Biden’s comments about locking up former President Trump were “profoundly stupid.” 

“More than anything else. It was such a profoundly stupid thing for the president to say. Here‘s why: It 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. Now, that’s not true,” Williams said. 

“Merely articulating it even as an accident, he gave fire to that nonsense,” he added, before arguing that criticism of it was somewhat unfair compared to what Trump has said about his political opponents. 

Biden said at an event in New Hampshire on Tuesday, “I know this sounds bizarre. It sounds like if I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up. We got to lock him up.” However, the president quickly added, “politically lock him up. Lock him out. That’s what we have to do.”

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The other panelists dismissed the comments, again making the case that everything Trump had said was much worse.

“He clarified his remarks. He, you know, he said lock him out and, politically, I think, he, he said those remarks, but he pretty quickly clarified it. It wasn’t hours later,” former Biden press secretary Kendra Barkoff said during the discussion. “I think the fact that people are jumping on it is pretty ironic given the fact that we just saw clips of Donald Trump saying… ‘maybe she‘s on drugs,’ maybe this I mean, the fact is this is what Donald Trump makes stuff up day in and day out.”

Jonathan Alter echoed her argument and said there was always “whataboutism with this crowd.”

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US President Joe Biden, with US Vice President Kamala Harris, speaks about border security and enforcement in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on January 5, 2023.  ((Photo by JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images))

The president was in Concord for an official event to highlight his administration’s efforts to lower health care costs and prescription drug prices. Minutes later, speaking at a political gathering at the New Hampshire Democratic Party headquarters, Biden was reiterating his longstanding argument that Trump, if re-elected, would be a threat to the nation’s democracy.

“Our democracy is at stake,” Biden said. “Think about it. Think about what would happen if Donald Trump wins this election.”

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Biden’s remarks went viral, as Axio reporter Alex Thompson said that a former Biden administration official, noting this could be politically unhelpful to Vice President Kamala Harris, texted him, “we gotta lock Joe up.”

Fox News’ Paul Steinhauser and Louis Casiano contributed to this report.