In New Hampshire last week Joe Biden accidentally on purpose revealed what Donald Trump and his supporters have long claimed, that the Justice Department’s prosecution of Trump is purely political.
Whether it was a slip of the tongue or not, Biden articulated the Democrats’ real strategy to prevent the former Republican president from retaking the White House – “lock him up.”
“So I know this sounds bizarre. (If) I said this five years ago, you’d lock me up. We got to lock him up,” Biden said on a trip to the Granite State.
“Politically lock him up,” the stumbling president added as the crowd applauded. “Lock him out. That’s what we have to do.”
Lock him up. Lock him out. What’s the difference? The gaffe – made during a talk to campaign workers in Concord – echoed the chant Republicans made eight years ago to Hillary Clinton – “Lock her up.”
But Biden’s comment underscores the Democrats’ plans to keep Trump from claiming victory through a long court battle if necessary.
And while it may make Democrats cheer, it does incredible damage to Kamala Harris’s campaign and the Justice Department’s case against Trump.
Not only does it fire up Trump supporters, it only cements their belief in the Biden administration’s use of “lawfare” to put the former Republican president in jail and stop him from occupying the Oval Office again.
It’s why Trump has only gained in the polls or stayed steady since his felony conviction and since he was charged in Georgia with trying to overturn the 2020 election.
And it’s why Harris has stopped her supporters from chanting “lock him up” on the campaign trail. “The courts are going to handle that,” she said.
Now we know why Democrats are keeping Biden away from the campaign trail or sending him to relatively strong Democratic states like New Hampshire.
Some in the media simply ignored Biden’s slip-up, while others downplayed it, much the same way they have ignored or downplayed other verbal missteps throughout his presidency.
“He clarified his remarks,” former Biden press secretary Kendra Barkoff said on CNN. “He, you know, he said lock him out and politically, I think, he said those remarks, but he pretty quickly clarified it, it wasn’t hours later.”
But it went viral on social media and Trump and his followers took notice.
“This is the ‘tell’ as to why the Democrat machine has been feverishly working to imprison Trump. It’s all been intentional,” Trump activist Charlie Kirk posted.
“Joe Biden just admitted the truth,” Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said. “He and Kamala’s plan all along has been to politically persecute their opponent President Trump because they can’t beat him fair and square. “We call on Kamala Harris to condemn Joe Biden’s disgraceful remark.”
Harris didn’t, and Biden aides attributed the comment to a brief slip of the tongue.
But there was no slip of the tongue. It was an incredibly revealing inside glimpse at what the Biden administration is really doing to Trump.