The “Lock her up!” chants were a staple of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rallies.
But in a sitdown with The New York Times on Tuesday, President-elect Trump indicated that he would not be pursuing any investigation or prosecution of his political rival. Fox News’s Megyn Kelly wants to know what gives.
“It’s just not something that I feel very strongly about,” Trump told a group of reporters and columnists at The New York Times earlier in the day. “I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t. She went through a lot and suffered greatly in many different ways.”
Kelly couldn’t get Trump to sit down with her Tuesday, but she did have one of his earliest supporters in Congress, Rep. Sean Duffy, on her Fox News show. The host did not hesitate to take Duffy to task for his party’s big reversal.
While Duffy expressed a desire to put the Clinton probe “behind us” and “move forward,” and suggested the “lock her up” chants only pertained to Clinton’s private server and not any investigation into the Clinton Foundation, Kelly pointed out that Trump made no such distinction in his latest remarks.
“Do you understand how people watch this and think, ‘Lyin’ politicians who just say anything to get elected,’” Kelly said, channeling the Trump voter. “They think we’re chumps, that we’re going to believe them then and now we’re supposed to believe them again now, even though the two messages appear to be diametrically opposed!”
As Duffy tried to characterize Trump as a gracious, positive candidate, Kelly shot back, “You were the guys chanting ‘Lock her up!’ And now it’s 180 and we’re supposed to pretend the magic of videotape doesn’t exist.”
“You understand some of the frustration of some of Mr. Trump’s supporters,” Kelly pleaded with Duffy. “And the frustration of reasonable people who see different messages coming out.”
It’s not so much that Kelly wants Trump and his new administration to “lock her up,” but she is not about to let him get away with the hypocrisy of winning the election on such an outrageous promise and then pretending like he never made it.