The Claim

Toward the end of his interview with 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl asked Trump about his criticism of Whitmer’s decision to keep Michigan locked down amid the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“Do you want to lock her up?” Stahl asked Trump, who responded, “Of course not.”

“So you don’t want to lock up Governor Whitmer?” Stahl asked again.

“When did I say lock her up? I never said that,” Trump said. “Wait a minute, when did I say lock her up? When did I say lock up the governor? I didn’t say lock up the governor. Why would I lock her up?”

Trump continued: “But why did you say, ‘You don’t want to lock up the governor’? Of course I don’t want to lock her up. Why would I lock her up?”

“I never said it, Lesley, I never said lock up the governor,” the president added during the interview when Stahl brought up a recent Trump rally in Michigan where his supporters could be heard chanting “lock her up.”

The Facts

During the October 17 rally in Muskegon County, Trump expressed his distaste for Whitmer for closing the state in an effort to mitigate the spread for the coronavirus.

“Now you gotta get your governor to open up your state, OK? And get your schools open, get your schools open. The schools have to be open, right?” Trump said during the rally.

Shortly after Trump’s comments, the crowd can be heard chanting “lock her up,” referring to Whitmer.

“Lock ’em all up,” Trump said while the crowd continued to chant “lock her up.”

During the rally, Trump also criticized Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, saying that he “and the Democrats want to keep Michigan locked up, locked down and closed for business.”

“It’s so badly hurting your state,” Trump added as the crowd of supporters behind him continued to chant “lock her up.”

In response to the crowd’s chants, Whitmer told NBC’s Meet the Press, “It’s incredibly disturbing that the president of the United States, 10 days after a plot to kidnap, put me on trial and execute me—10 days after that was uncovered—the president is at it again and inspiring and incentivizing and inciting this kind of domestic terrorism.”

Shortly after Whitmer’s remarks, Lara Trump, senior adviser to Trump’s re-election campaign appeared on CNN’s State of the Union and downplayed her father-in-law’s comments, saying, “He wasn’t doing anything, I don’t think, to provoke people to threaten this woman at all.”

“It’s a fun, light atmosphere. Of course he wasn’t encouraging people to threaten this woman—that’s ridiculous,” she added.

The Ruling

Mostly False.

While Trump’s supporters did repeatedly chant “lock her up” when the president brought up Whitmer, he never directly said that he wanted to lock her up, and instead said “lock ’em all up.”

Newsweek reached out to the White House for a comment from Trump but did not receive a response in time for publication.