Trump claims he didn’t jail Hillary Clinton to 'bring the country together' despite supporters' pressure
WASHINGTON, DC: In a revealing interview with podcaster Lex Fridman, former President Donald Trump explained why he chose not to pursue legal action against Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and his Democratic opponent during the 2016 presidential election.
"I didn’t want to put her in jail because it would have looked so bad for the United States," Trump said. "I thought it looked terrible to take the president’s wife and put her in prison. I want to bring the country together.”
The 45th President further explained that despite significant pressure from his supporters to take action against Hillary, he believed it would have been detrimental to national unity.
“Look, I’ve been there for four years. I could have done a big number on Hillary Clinton. I thought it looked terrible to take the president’s wife and put her in prison,” Trump remarked. “She’s so lucky I didn’t do anything. Hillary is a lucky woman because I had a lot of people pushing me to — they wanted to see something.”
Donald Trump says he 'did not' want to put Hillary Clinton in jail
Describing the situation as potentially embarrassing for the country, Donald Trump continued, “I thought it looked so bad. Think of it, you have the President of the United States’ wife and you also have a Secretary of State, right? She was. But you’re going to put the president’s wife in prison?”
Trump also dismissed the ongoing criticisms and allegations against him as “hoaxes,” drawing comparisons to the Russia investigation. “And yet, when I got out, they have all these hoaxes,” he added. “They have all these dishonest hoaxes, just like they did in the past with ‘Russia, Russia, Russia.’ That was a hoax. The 51 different agencies or agents, that was a hoax. The whole thing was a hoax.”
The twice-impeached former president further clarified that his desire to promote national unity was a key reason behind his decision not to imprison Hillary Clinton.
“I didn’t want to put her in jail, and I didn’t,” Trump stated. “And I explained it to people. You know, they say, ‘Lock her up, lock her up.’ We won. I said, ‘We don’t want to put her in jail. We want to bring the country together. I want to bring the country together. You don’t bring the country together by putting her in jail."
Reality of Donald Trump vs Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign
Despite Donald Trump’s claims, the reality of the 2016 campaign presents a different picture. During his rallies, he frequently encouraged the "lock her up" chants, pausing to let the crowd’s enthusiasm grow and even repeating the phrase himself.
On multiple occasions, he explicitly called for Hillary Clinton's imprisonment, labeling her email practices as Secretary of State under the Obama administration as criminal, even though no charges were ever filed against her.
At rallies across the country, he repeatedly called for her incarceration, famously responding during a debate with, "Because you’d be in jail," when Hillary suggested Trump lacked the temperament to enforce the law.
In contrast, Trump accused Democrats of damaging the image of the United States, comparing it to a third-world banana republic. “But then when I got out, you know, they went to work on me,” he remarked.
Donald Trump was convicted this year by a jury in New York of 34 felonies for falsifying business records to conceal a hush-money payment to an adult film actress. “It’s amazing. They suffer from massive Trump Derangement Syndrome, TDS. And I don’t know if it’s curable from their standpoint,” he said.
