Former Australian prime minister compares ’lock her up’ chant to Salem witch trials

The former prime minister of Australia this week compared the frequent “lock her up” chants against Hillary Clinton that pop up at Trump rallies to the Salem witch trials. 

Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female prime minister, told Clinton in a discussion in her country on Thursday that she was “dismayed” by the pervasive chants against Clinton, which were common during candidate Donald Trump’s presidential campaign rallies and are still frequently heard at President Trump’s rallies, including as recently as last week in Indiana.

“It just dismayed me that for you, this ended up with chants of ‘lock her up’ or ‘string her up’ at Republican rallies,” Gillard said. “It’s like the Salem witch trials.” 

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Clinton attributed the chants to a “very vocal minority” of voters, during a wide-ranging discussion focused on women in politics at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre.

“I, as prime minister, referred to as a witch, a commentator said that I should be put in a chaff bag and drowned at sea… I pointed out that you can’t drown a witch,” noted Gillard, who served as prime minister from 2010 to 2013. 

The prosecutors during the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts during the late 1600s accused mainly women of practicing witchcraft. Multiple people were publicly executed as a result.