One for the Bad Headlines Hall of Fame
Here’s one for the Bad Headlines Hall of Fame:
On Sunday, The Washington Post ran a story with the headline “Trump claims he never called for Hillary Clinton to be locked up.” It references an interview Trump did that aired on Fox News’ Fox & Friends Weekend.
The article, which is just 528 words long, only notes that there were “several occasions” in which Trump “agreed” with chants from the audience at his rallies. Weirdly, the piece tries to give him credit for his restraint after being elected.
“Trump claims he never called for Hillary Clinton to be locked up” (The Washington Post, Mariana Alfaro, 6/2/24)
However, there are several instances in which Trump did agree with calls for Clinton’s jailing.
In July 2016, for example, Trump said he would not be “Mr. Nice Guy” when it came to Clinton, during a Colorado rally where the crowd was calling for Clinton to be locked up.
“Every time I mention her, everyone screams, ‘Lock her up, lock her up,’” Trump told the crowd. “You know what, I’m starting to agree with you.”
In the weeks before the 2016 election, Trump even said he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton and seek to put her in jail for her use of the private email server.
But after his election, on Nov. 9, 2016, Trump did not lash out at Clinton when, during a post-election rally, a crowd began a loud chant of “Lock her up!”
“Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country,” Trump said then. “I mean that very seriously. Now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division. … I say it is time for us to come together as one united people.”
But the chants didn’t stop, even four years later when Trump was running against a different Democratic presidential nominee. In September 2020, Trump said “I agree” during chants to lock up Clinton.
Rolling Stone has a more honest assessment of Trump’s relationship with calls to “lock up” his political opponents, noting examples of Trump saying at a 2020 rally, “Lock up the Bidens, lock up Hillary. Lock them up,” as well as other figures he approvingly called for the incarceration of. Rolling Stone even pulled up an example of Trump saying during an August 2023 interview with Glenn Beck that if he becomes president again he will have “no choice” but to imprison his opponents “because they’re doing it to us.”
“Trump Denies Ever Saying ‘Lock Her Up.’ He Did… Several Times” (Rolling Stone, Peter Wade, 6/2/24)
Trump not only beamed and nodded from the podium as his rally crowds chanted, “Lock her up,” he also said it himself, multiple times. He said it on Oct. 14, 2016, at a rally in Greensboro, N.C. As the crowd chanted the line, Trump said, “For what she’s done, they should lock her up.”
In fact, he said it numerous times on the 2016 campaign trail, and he carried the line forward during his presidency. He even said it of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in October 2020. When the crowd chanted, “Lock her up!” about Whitmer, Trump responded with, “Lock them all up.” And that same month, he told a crowd of the Bidens, “You should lock them up. Lock up the Bidens, lock up Hillary.”
When a crowd chanted, “Lock her up!” about Dr. Christine Blasey-Ford, the professor who accused Supreme Court Justice Bret Kavanaugh of assaulting her when both were teens, Trump gave the crowd enthusiastic nods and a thumbs-up.
As recently as last August, Trump hinted he might attempt to lock up his opponents. In an interview with Glenn Beck, the host asked, “Do you regret not ‘locking her up.’ And if you’re president again, will you lock people up?”
There’s no reason the Post couldn’t have added the word “falsely” into the headline. Instead, it left it ambiguous and fed readers a bizarre “both sides” story that distorts reality.
Hours later, after much social media criticism, the paper did just that. Better late than never, but this should have been something it got right from the start.
I’m a stickler for descriptive headlines because I know the truth: they’re the only thing most people read.
In 2019, I wrote a piece for Media Matters titled, “Everyone knows headlines are broken. Here’s how news organizations can start fixing them.” At the time, media organizations struggled to report on Trump’s statements, often running headlines that simply said, “Trump: [completely false thing]” and calling it a day.
My argument was that these organizations had a duty to their readers to write headlines, tweets, and push notifications as though they were the only parts of the story people would see. Why? because often, they are.
“Trump says…”, “Trump claims…”, etc., will never be acceptable as standalone headlines. The man cannot help but lie about things big and small. This really is as simple as making it read, “Trump falsely claims he never…” and calling it a day, but the Post missed it.
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