A Trump supporter attends an "America First" Unity rally in Cleveland, Ohio, on Monday.James West
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.
