Source tells @Morning_Joe Trump won’t pursue Clinton investigations; @KellyannePolls responds: “it sends a very strong message” to Congress pic.twitter.com/JiN0AAzXdU
— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) November 22, 2016
Donald Trump said many outlandish, awful things about a lot of people during his presidential campaign, though one trend that sticks out in particular was the president-elect’s proclamations about prosecuting Hillary Clinton. (After all, this is the same man who told his Democratic rival she’d “be in jail” if he were president during the second televised debate.) Rallies for the Republican nominee were often accompanied by chants of “lock her up,” and when F.B.I. Director James Comey issued a late statement regarding new emails in his agency’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server, the news only encouraged Trump and his supporters further.
According to MSNBC’s Morning Joe, however, “sources” revealed Trump wouldn’t “pursue investigations into [Clinton’s] private email server use” nor the “Clinton Foundation”:
Source tells @Morning_Joe @realDonaldTrump won't pursue investigations into @HillaryClinton for private email server use/Clinton Foundation.
— Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) November 22, 2016
Trump’s campaign manager turned senior transition adviser, Kellyanne Conway, later joined the daily morning news talk show and confirmed the report:
“I think when the President-elect, who’s also the head of your party, tells you before he’s even inaugurated that he doesn’t wish to pursue these charges, it sends a very strong message, tone, and content [to his fellow Republicans]. I think Hillary Clinton still has to face that fact that a majority of Americans don’t find her to be honest or trustworthy, but if Donald Trump can help her heal, then perhaps it’s a good thing.”
Whether or not the “majority of Americans” actually feel this way is questionable, especially since Clinton won the popular vote by at least 1.7 million. What is determinable, however, is the fact that Trump has reneged on yet another major campaign promise — much like he has with his prior threats to totally repeal Obamacare and the wall along the Mexican border. Or at least that’s the way many of the president-elect’s followers view the news, as evidenced by their ire on social media.
Of course, as NBC Nightly News‘ Bradd Jaffy and many other journalists on Twitter have already pointed out, Trump’s promise to prosecute Clinton — and his breaking that promise — aren’t how the Department of Justice works. The Atlantic‘s Adam Serwer phrases it rather bluntly when he notes, “The president doesn’t decide who to prosecute.” More than anything, Serwer adds, Conway’s confirmation of Morning Joe‘s report suggests, “Trump thinks [the DOJ] is his personal Revenge Squad.”
(Via Morning Joe)