Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Tuesday chuckled along as a group of high school students he spoke to chanted “lock her up.”
The chant, a reference among President Trump’s supporters to Hillary Clinton, began after Sessions lamented the spread of “trigger warnings” and “safe spaces” on college campuses around the country during remarks at Turning Point USA’s High School Leadership Summit in Washington, D.C., where hundreds of high school students were in attendance.
Sessions reacted with approval after the crowd jeered examples of schools that have offered therapy dogs and coloring books to help students cope with stress.
“I like this bunch,” Sessions said. “You’re not going to be backing down. Go get ‘em.”
A few calls of “lock her up” then expanded into a room-wide chant, prompting chuckles from Sessions.
“Lock her up,” he repeated into the microphone. “I heard that a long time over the last campaign.”
He then continued with his prepared remarks, in which he claimed some schools are trying to cultivate “a generation of … supercilious snowflakes.” Sessions’s prepared remarks did not mention Clinton by name.
{mosads}Trump supporters frequently called for Clinton to be jailed during the 2016 campaign. The chant has continued to surface whenever the president mentions Clinton during campaign rallies since he’s taken office.
The president has repeatedly questioned why the Justice Department is not investigating his 2016 campaign opponent. Last week, when asked during a press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin whether he believed Russia interfered in the 2016 election, Trump asked what happened to Clinton’s deleted emails.
A faction of conservative lawmakers has pressed Sessions to appoint a second special counsel to investigate Clinton. He has thus far declined to do so.
Trump has publicly criticized Sessions on multiple occasions, and said he would not have picked the former senator for attorney general if he’d known Sessions would recuse himself from the Russia investigation.
–Updated at 10:57 a.m.