The Mask Slips: WATCH as Biden Says, 'We Gotta Lock [Trump] Up'

Talk saying the quiet part out loud ... get a load of this:

Biden in NH lists what Trump would do as president and says: “we gotta lock him up” and then, appearing to realize how his comments would be taken, adds: “politically, lock him up.” pic.twitter.com/cw3X8RzKn2
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) October 22, 2024

Let’s break this down a bit, shall we? First off, he complains about the horrors Donald Trump might engage in, namely that Trump is talking about getting rid of the Department of Education, replacing every civil servant and then, Biden says Trump “thinks he has a right under the Supreme Court ruling on immunity to be able to, if need be,” more or less kill a person “he believes to be a threat to him.”

None of those things are cause to lock a person in prison. We don’t believe Trump can completely abolish the Department of Education or replace all civil servants without congressional authorization (but we haven’t looked into it), but if Trump tries to do either of those things illegally, the solution is for any aggrieved parties to sue in civil court. It isn’t a crime.

(For the record, we haven't heard of Trump threatening to fire and replace every civil servant. But we have heard suggestions that Elon Musk might get in there and fire about 80% of the executive branch.)

As for the killing part, we quoted a great deal of Biden’s words on the killing part because taken literally, Biden is accusing Trump of believing he could kill a man, if necessary, in self-defense. And we are pretty sure he can, legally, anywhere in America. We don’t believe there is a single American jurisdiction (state or territory) that says that if a person has a reasonable belief that they are in imminent danger of death, that they aren't allowed to kill that person.

So, this is further evidence that Trump is indeed being prosecuted for his politics, not based on his conduct, especially in the cases brought by the federal government. And apart from the political fallout, we wonder if this might be used to renew challenges to his federal prosecutions. As we point out regularly, the First Amendment protects citizens against political or viewpoint discrimination and so if Trump could prove his prosecution is political, the courts could stop it for that reason.

Of course, the retort is going to be “but Jack Smith is an independent prosecutor. He made the decision himself. Biden wasn’t involved.” This is what we said before, in addressing that objection:

From 2010 to 2014, Virginia had a governor named Bob McDonnell and he was considered a rising star in the Republican Party. He might have been a leading candidate for President in 2016, until Obama’s Justice Department went after him. He was convicted of accepting bribes, but McDonnell argued that even if he had committed all the conduct that the government alleged, the statute didn’t cover what he had done. The district court found against him. The Fourth Circuit found against him. But then he won in the Supreme Court. Unanimously. They vacated the verdict below and, as far as the law is concerned, he was never convicted nor could he be tried again. (McDonnell v. U.S., 136 S. Ct. 2355 (2016))
But by then the damage was done. We haven’t seen hide nor hair of McDonnell since then. The federal prosecutors lost, but what a coincidence? They wrecked the political career of a man who might have presented a serious challenge to the Democratic nominee in 2016.
Oh, and the prosecutor involved in that case? Jack Smith.
People keep saying Smith is an independent prosecutor, but the Biden administration knew exactly what they were getting when they appointed him: A political attack dog, who doesn’t mind stretching the law to get his man. So, yeah, maybe Smith made his own decisions, but that’s a bit like releasing a starving wolf into the same cage as a sheep and pretending you don’t know what the outcome will be. The Biden administration might have been a little fuzzy on the details, but they knew what Smith would do: He’d go after Trump and get him on anything he could.

So, all these complaints that Trump will lock up political opponents? Projection. And projection is very often an expression of guilt. Seriously, a lot of Democrats’ fear of Trump amounts to nothing more than a fear that he will be as awful to them as they have been to him.

For his part, Mr. Thompson claims to share the details of a text he received:

Noting this could be politically unhelpful to Harris, a former Biden admin official texts me: “we gotta lock Joe up.” https://t.co/juzeUrhM1H
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) October 22, 2024

And another:

A counterpoint from a current Biden admin official: "For better or worse, no one is listening to him anymore and his words have little power and less reach. It’s a blip. Gone in any meaningful way by mid-day tomorrow if it makes it that long."
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) October 22, 2024

They think the people are going to ignore it? Well, that is where sites like this and people like you, the reader, come in. Please do everything you can to prove this anonymous writer wrong. Please spread the story far and wide.

We don’t even have to wait three months anymore. They are overtly saying the quiet part out loud. pic.twitter.com/5o3C7Ru0R5
— Pam Bible (@bible1_pam) October 22, 2024

Biden all in for Trump.
He knows how to get out the vote. He’s getting his revenge on Kamala for the coup. Next week he’ll be wearing his MAGA hat again.
— John Heard (@John_W_Heard) October 22, 2024

That’s an interesting theory but we are not quite convinced. We do think that Kamala isn’t distancing herself from Biden like she needs to precisely to avoid antagonizing Biden and we think sometimes Biden has been lashing out at her, subtly. But we are not ready to conclude this particular statement is deliberate sabotage… when he tried to walk it back immediately.

And for the record, we covered the first time Biden wore a Trump hat, here.

Biden, once again, proving he's an illegitimate president and, apparently, not done embarrassing himself, yet.
— Tara Lynn Thompson (@TaraLynnSays) October 22, 2024

What I don’t understand is, if he thinks the president has the power to murder people, why doesn’t he order the military to kill Trump? Or has he already? 🤔
— Kyle For USA (@KyleforUSA) October 22, 2024

Thankfully the Supreme Court gave Biden the presidential immunity to lock up his political opponents.
— Franklin (@franklinisbored) October 22, 2024

No, they really didn’t. Again, if you want the actual skinny, we write about the decision, here.

DEMOCRACY and stuff…..🙄 https://t.co/Rc5328gPRK pic.twitter.com/9Cwt8i5Xfl
— Brian😎🐿️🎃🇺🇸 (@BrianMGC) October 22, 2024

The Star Wars Prequels were frustratingly uneven in terms of quality, but they gave us some real bangers in terms of memes.

But Trump is the threat to democracy. How did we arrive in this age when people are so obtuse about their own positions and hypocrisy? https://t.co/9cDPkNtfY3
— Daniel Ostendorff (@dostendorff) October 22, 2024

To 'save Democracy' https://t.co/0cNagcbCYW
— Boycotter of DEI Invested Video Games (@trbyall) October 22, 2024

My source on the ground says he was talking about Todd Phillips here and not Trump. #Joker2 https://t.co/M5aeexDJz4
— Daniel Long (@DanLong1298) October 22, 2024

Yeah, we avoided Joker 2 like the plague.

Wilmington rn, probably. pic.twitter.com/j9qxBKWBWF
— Alex Thompson (@AlexThomp) October 22, 2024

Not really.

He meant it. He wants to literally lock Trump up
— Exiled Somewhere in USA (@MyPresidentme) October 22, 2024

We know.

And just in case u haven’t realized it “politically lock him up” makes zero sense and was a complete fail to save that Freudian slip
— Chris Em 🤘🏼 (@stockuppers) October 22, 2024

Right?!

Joe is getting dangerously close to moving from “maybe we should have stuck with him” to getting the blame if she loses. https://t.co/NybRxfPSf4
— Karol Markowicz (@karol) October 23, 2024

Just when things seem bleakest for Harris, the all but forgotten Biden wanders in from the wings at the last minute to absent mindedly ratify a Trump & co. talking point Democrats have long insisted was the product of paranoid right-wing fantasies. https://t.co/h2JrE1LQ9p
— Noah Rothman (@NoahCRothman) October 22, 2024

Oh, politically lock him up. You know, that famous turn of phrase we’ve all heard before. https://t.co/xRBgioo4is
— John Ekdahl (@JohnEkdahl) October 22, 2024

Guess we're not going to talk about how everybody in the room clapped before Biden added the "politically" qualifier. https://t.co/FRi2D9I2vN
— pragmatometer (@pragmatometer) October 23, 2024

Exactly.

If she wins, Harris is going to 25th Amendment him within a week.
Also if she loses. https://t.co/Iijj6vRjbX
— Grant Bosse (@grantbosse) October 22, 2024

Yeah, we are very concerned about what the next few months are going to look like, regardless of who wins the election.

Finally: