We Asked Trump Voters, “How Should Hillary Clinton Be Punished?” Their Answers Were Amazing.

“Treason is punishable by death. It’s in our Constitution.”

On the second night of the Republican convention, Gov. Chris Christie assailed Hillary Clinton in a speech that resembled a mock trial for a long list of her supposed misdeeds, including Benghazi and her handling of emails at the State Department. During prime time at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Christie presented his “bill of indictment” to a raucous crowd that enthusiastically chanted “guilty!” and broke into chants of “Lock her up!”

“We’re going to present the facts to you, as a jury of her peers, both in this hall and in living rooms around our nation,” Christie said. “We didn’t disqualify Hillary Clinton to be president of the United States. The facts of her life and career disqualify her.”

The next morning, it seemed, the ante was raised, when news broke that Al Baldasaro, a prominent Trump supporter who advises the campaign on veterans’ issues, had said on a radio show that Clinton deserves to “be put in the firing line and shot for treason.” Baldasaro spoke at numerous Trump rallies during the primary campaign, and Trump once praised him as “my favorite vet.” (Trump’s onetime butler recently called for killing President Barack Obama.)

I wanted to find out how deep the sentiment to jail Hillary—or do worse—ran among die-hard Trump supporters gathering at events outside the convention hall. So I took to the streets to produce the video above.

For some, execution was on the table. “She’s extremely corrupt, she’s extremely dangerous,” said Rhonda Welsch, a 55-year-old food and beverage worker at a Hawaii resort. “I think that’s what she deserves: the death penalty.”

This is the third video in our series about Trump voters in Cleveland. Check out the video where I asked Trump voters, “When did America stop being great?” and the video recording their reactions to Melania Trump’s plagiarism scandal.

 

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate