Dozens of times on the campaign trail President Elect Donald Trump encouraged the chant: “Lock her up!” He was, of course, speaking about Hillary Clinton.
His campaign, and much of the Republican Party, insisted that she was guilty of various crimes even though multiple investigations found no wrongdoing.
In the course of the third debate, on October 9th, he pledged that he would direct his Attorney General to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate her use of a private email server.
Today he responded by telling the New York Times “never mind.”
So what’s a Trump supporter supposed to do? As I write this, if you google “lock her up” you’ll get 9,990,000 responses. It’s actually kind of fun to read some of the articles.
The National Review, a conservative magazine founded by William F. Buckley said this: “If there is anything more to Donald Trump than bluster, we have yet to see it. Trump has not even been sworn in as president, and he already is walking away from campaign promises that are too hard to keep, starting with his pledge to pursue the case against Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
The conservative website Heat Street announced that the swamp won. In a previous post I spoke about his promise to “drain the swamp.” Clearly they are not happy.
Here’s what I’ll say: If you voted for Mr. Trump this is far from your last betrayal. All Presidents make promises they find they can’t keep once they get in office (and in humility I’ll recognize President Obama promised to close the prison at Guantanamo).
But I always believed President Obama was sincere in his promises. Mr. Trump, to my thinking, makes promises not because he expected to keep them, but to gain popularity. I think his enthusiasm for phrases like “lock her up,” “build the wall” and others were never true campaign promises and he never really meant to keep them.
In the next four years I believe that Mr. Trump’s supporters are going to find it more and more difficult and painful to support him.
By the way, I encourage everyone to read this article from Robert Reich.