Delegates’ calls at the Republican National Convention to imprison Hillary Clinton are “very banana republic,” Democratic senator Al Franken said Thursday.
Speaking at a press conference in Cleveland outside the convention, the Minnesota senator criticized the Republican Party and the behavior of the attendees, saying that the rhetoric of speakers at the convention has “just been startlingly ugly.”
Franken’s comments were directed in particular at the frequent chants at the convention of “lock her up” in reference to Clinton, who is set to become the Democrats’ nominee next week in Philadelphia.
Several speakers have encouraged such chants, including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who dedicated his speech Tuesday to “prosecuting” Clinton’s failures as secretary of state and her mismanagement of her private email server, and the delegates to declare her guilty of several counts.
Franken said that rhetoric was to be expected from Donald Trump, given Trump’s suggestion that Mexican illegal immigrants are criminals. He decried Trump’s rhetoric toward immigrants, and for calling for a ban against Muslim immigrants entering the country. That policy, he said, is “antithetical to what the framers talked about” in the Constitution.
Franken, a second-term senator, generally avoids the national press. On Thursday, however, he appeared alongside New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Florida congresswoman and Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz to criticize the Republican convention.
