Eric Boehlert Explains To SirusXM's The Agenda That Media Can't Both Acknowledge Trump's Threat To Jail Clinton And Still Claim “He Might Have Won” The Debate

From the October 10 edition of SirusXM's The Agenda:

Video file

ERIC BOEHLERT: I just want to say, one of the things I noticed right after the debate -- within the first 30 minutes when I was just kind of surfing around cable news --  the idea that if Trump wins he's going to put his political opponent in jail. That was kind of brushed over. I wasn't seeing a lot of discussion about it. It seemed like it took like 45 minutes for an hour to that -- for that to set in. And people -- as I was watching the cable coverage about 11:30, midnight, people only then really kind of said, “Wait a minute, what are we talking about here? This sounds like a dictatorship.” So, if Trump goes on stage and says, “When I win, I'm going to put you in jail,” that's kind of the full stop. You can't --

ARI RABIN-HAVT (HOST): Well, but that's part and parcel of the conservative media rhetoric. I mean, Trump -- Hillary For Prison is an Infowars meme. 

BOEHLERT: That's right. That's right. And this idea that she should be locked up -- and we've seen that for a long time -- but for Trump to explicitly say on the debate stage, “When I win, I'm going to unleash the federal government on you, and then you're going to be in jail,” that's not how democracies work. But, my point was, if you're a pundit in your analysis, and you acknowledge that he said that and it's weird, you can't then go on to say then it was a draw. That's kind of a full stop. Him wanting to put his political opponent in jail, that means that -- you can't then say he might have won the debate. Those two things are contrary to each other. And I just think it was weird that it seemed to take about an hour for that to set in. I don't know if pundits were watching Twitter and people were realizing that people were pointing out the insanity of all that, but, to me, that was just like -- that was crazy.

Previously:

“A New Low In American Democracy”: Journalists And Pundits Condemn Trump’s Threat To Jail Clinton

When The Trump Bar Is Set So Low, He’s A Success Even When He Threatens To Imprison Hillary Clinton

Trump Adviser Roger Stone Praises Trump’s Claim That As President He Would Appoint A Special Prosecutor To Investigate Clinton