Wednesday, during an interview that aired on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” former President Donald Trump briefly contrasted how Ultimate Fighting Championship competitors reacted after a match to how he handled former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton despite “lock her up” chants he heard on the campaign trail in 2016.
According to Trump, it would have been a “terrible thing” to jail Clinton, the wife of a former U.S. president.
Partial transcript as follows:
TRUMP: It was 25,000 people, whatever they had going, absolute — there wasn’t…
(CROSSTALK)
HANNITY: Right after your conviction.
TRUMP: But you know what?
What I watched, and it was very — some of the fighters, two, in particular, hated their opponent. And this went on for months. The fight was broadcast out.
HANNITY: Sure.
TRUMP: And they announced the fight. And the hatred was real. It was the real deal. These people have — they have a lot of hatred. And they hated.
And then the fight ended, and they’re hugging and kissing in the ring. They’re down, sitting on the — they’re hugging and kissing. It’s like nothing happened. It happened on two fights. There was tremendous animosity between the two fighters and the other two fighters. And, at the end, that’s what happened.
And, in a certain way, after we won against Hillary, people would say, “Lock her up, lock her up.” And I said, wouldn’t it be terrible if I locked up the wife of the president of the United States, former, and locked up the former secretary of state? It’s a terrible thing.
You’re starting off, you want to bring the country together. I want to bring the country together. And success does bring the country together, because we had the most successful economy in the history of our country just prior to COVID. And, even at the end, I got it back. It was an amazing thing.
But we had the most successful economy in history. And I was getting calls from radical left people wanting to meet. And I’m telling you, success, African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, women, men, people with diplomas, people without diplomas, people that went to MIT, Harvard, and Wharton, people that didn’t get out of high school, the most successful economy we have ever had.
And people that I would say you call them on the radical left — call it whatever you want, liberal people, progressive people. They were all calling. And they were saying, let’s get together. This is amazing.
Nobody, no — every single group, nobody has ever done better than during that period of time, in my administration, during that period. And they wanted to get together. And it would have happened. We would have happened. It was really something.
I’m not sure I would have been able to say to you that there was a way to unify. Success will unify. And I think we’re going to have a tremendous success. We have to bring it back fast, because this country is — we’re a failing nation. We are really a failing nation right now.
We’re being laughed at all over the world.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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