During President Donald Trump’s address to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday, a mention of Hillary Clinton caused those in attendance to chant “lock her up” just like during the 2016 presidential election.
This came as Trump talked about Hillary Clinton’s infamous comments that about half of his supporters are deplorable. In reaction, the crowd booed and chanted “lock her up.” Trump did not respond to these chants, and he briefly put up his arms as if to tell the crowd to stop. This is in contrast to how Trump handled the “lock her up” chants during the campaign; he typically voiced his agreement, telling the crowd at his rallies that she “should be locked up.”
After the chant ended, Trump continued with his thought, saying that nobody would have thought a word like “deplorable” would do such damage to a campaign.
This was not the only instance of Trump’s speech on Friday echoing the 2016 election. The president also again suggested that Hillary Clinton rigged the Democratic primary against Bernie Sanders using superdelegates and that many Sanders supporters were now backing him; this is a talking point Trump usually used during his campaign rallies. The CPAC speech also ended with the song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” the song that ended every one of Trump’s rallies throughout the presidential election.
Since November 8th, Trump has explicitly said that he has no plans to “lock her up” and that this was just a catchy campaign slogan.
“That plays great before the election,” Trump said during a December rally. “Now we don’t care.”