“I said, ‘Wouldn’t that be really bad?’ …wouldn’t it be terrible to throw the president’s wife and the former secretary of state – think about it, the former secretary of state – but the president’s wife in jail? Trump used Tuesday on Newsmax.
“But they want to do it,” Trump said, appearing to refer to his opponents. “So, you know, it’s a terrible, terrible path that they’re leading us down, and it’s very possible that this has to happen to them.”
“This is a terrible precedent for our country,” he said of the lawsuit filed against him in New York at another point in the interview. “Does this mean the next president will do this to them? That’s really the question.
Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in New York, called the case politically motivated and attacked the liberal prosecutor who brought it. Prosecutors said they were following the facts. Trump and his allies have also repeatedly suggested that President Biden was behind the prosecution of Trump, despite no evidence of any coordination by the Biden administration with local authorities who oversaw the case. .
The former president faces criminal charges in three other cases in which prosecutors charged him for his alleged role in trying to overturn the 2020 election and for his alleged mishandling of classified documents. But it’s not clear whether those cases — those brought by the federal government in Washington and Florida, as well as a state case in Georgia — will be decided before Election Day in November.
Representatives for the Trump and Biden campaigns did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump made his opponents pay at the heart of his campaign, at one point telling the crowd: “I am your punishment.” Privately, he has told advisers and friends that he wants the Justice Department to investigate some former aides and allies who now criticize him, the Washington Post previously reported. And he promised to appoint a special prosecutor to examine Biden and his family.
But Trump’s message has also been confusing at times. “I won’t have time to take revenge. We’re going to make this country so prosperous again that I won’t have time for revenge,” he said at an event in Iowa in January.
In an interview, parts of which aired Sunday on “Fox & Friends Weekend,” after his conviction, Trump distanced himself from his supporters’ calls in 2016 to “lock up” Clinton, then the Democratic presidential candidate, even if he adopted the idea at the time. points.
At a rally in July 2016, as some in the crowd called for Clinton’s imprisonment, Trump said he would not be “Mr. Clinton.” “Nice guy. »
“Every time I mention her, everyone screams, ‘Lock her up, lock her up,'” Trump said. “You know what, I’m starting to agree with you.”
But after his election in November. On December 9, 2016, Trump changed his tune. “Hillary worked very long and very hard for a long time and we owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude for her service to our country,” Trump said at the time.
Mariana Alfaro contributed to this report.