Sen. Jeff Flake on Sunday chastised Republicans for repeated demands to jail Hillary Clinton, saying the "lock her up chant" at Trump campaign rallies is "inappropriate" — and that conservatives ought to speak out against it.
In an interview on NBC News' "Meet The Press," the Arizona Republican decried the chant that erupted as recently as last week at a rally President Donald Trump held in West Virginia last week.
"During rallies when the chants, 'lock her up,' you know, we shouldn't be the party for jailing your political opponents," he said. "And anybody at that rally, anybody at those rallies, ought to stand up and say, 'That's inappropriate. We shouldn't be doing that.'"
"And I wish we as a party and elected officials would do more of that," he continued, "in particularly ugly conspiracy theories come out or simply fake news. Stuff that is just demonstrably false. We ought to stand up and say, 'Hey, that's just not right.'"
Flake said he wishes "that we, as a party, would have stood up, for example, when the birtherism thing was going along," referring to a theory doubting former President Barack Obama's American birth — one voiced by Trump in 2011.
"A lot of people did stand up but not enough," Flake said.
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