Donald Trump on Tuesday, while arguing he didn’t jail Hillary Clinton because it would have set a bad precedent, alluded that he may soon need to imprison political opponents as retribution for his criminal conviction in New York.
“An an example, Hillary, with the hammering of her cellphones and all of the things she did — but wouldn't it be terrible to throw the president's wife and the former secretary of state … into jail? But they want to do it,” Trump said in an interview on Newsmax. “So, it's a terrible, terrible path that they're leading us to, and it's very possible that it's going to have to happen to them.”
Trump has in the past openly supported jailing his political opponents, and his supporters have reiterated that call in the wake of a jury convicting him on 34 criminal counts of falsifying business records. The Republican Party has been backing, without evidence, a conspiracy theory that the Biden administration pushed the prosecution for political purposes. In turn, many conservatives argue Democrats should be fair game for political prosecutions if Trump wins the 2024 presidential election and returns to power.
In the interview, Trump argued he could have taken such action during his first term in office to punish Clinton, the former secretary of state and his Democratic opponent in 2016, but decided against it.
“Some people said I should have done it. But it would have been very easy to do it, but I thought it would be a terrible precedent for our country,” Trump said. “And now, whoever it may be, you're going to have to view it very much differently. This is a bad, bad road that they're leading us down to as a country.”
