{"id":57486,"date":"2016-11-23T08:35:02","date_gmt":"2016-11-23T12:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=57486"},"modified":"2016-11-23T08:58:41","modified_gmt":"2016-11-23T12:58:41","slug":"trumps-jail-clinton-u-turn-sparks-conservative-backlash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateofthenation2012.com\/?p=57486","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s ‘jail Clinton’ U-turn sparks conservative backlash"},"content":{"rendered":"

BBC<\/p>\n

Donald Trump supporters are lashing out at the president-elect for backing down from prosecuting Hillary Clinton over her use of a private email server.<\/p>\n

His team said he would not keep his campaign pledge to try to have her jailed, and Mr Trump later said it would be too divisive to go ahead with.<\/p>\n

The FBI cleared her of any criminality but chants of “lock her up” became a rallying cry at his campaign events.<\/p>\n

Conservatives seized on the news as a “betrayal” and a “broken promise”.<\/p>\n

Redstate.com said that a failure to appoint a special prosecutor, as Mr Trump promised, would reveal the “very real fact that the candidate is not who he claimed to be”.<\/p>\n

The right-wing Breitbart News Network, one of the Manhattan billionaire’s most loyal supporters, denounced the climb-down as a “broken promise”.<\/p>\n

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter tweeted her reaction to the news, saying: “Whoa! I thought we elected @realDonaldTrump president. Did we make him the FBI, & DOJ? His job is pick those guys, not do their jobs.”<\/p>\n

She later followed up to say that: “No president shld be blocking investigators from doing their jobs. #EqualUnderLaw”<\/p>\n

The right-leaning legal organisation Judicial Watch said it was “a betrayal of his promise to the American people to ‘drain the swamp’ of out-of-control corruption in Washington”.<\/p>\n

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REUTERS \u2022 Threats to get Clinton jailed were a feature of the Trump campaign<\/p><\/div>\n

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Reality check: Jon Sopel, BBC News North America Editor<\/h2>\n

Remember crooked Hillary? The most corrupt politician ever, whose email scandal would be as big – if not bigger – than Watergate?<\/p>\n

The butt of all those full-throated chants at Trump rallies, “lock her up, lock her up”?<\/p>\n

And who could forget the memorable exchange in the second presidential debate, when Donald Trump promised to appoint a special prosecutor.<\/p>\n

But now all that is gone, just some overheated campaign rhetoric that is being shelved, if you listen to his spokeswoman, Kellyanne Conway and close confidante, Rudy Giuliani.<\/p>\n

This is part reality check: there is so much to do in the first 100 days, do you want to be bogged down in something as controversial as this?<\/p>\n

And it’s partly that the job’s been done – if the language during the campaign was about discrediting Hillary Clinton in the eyes of enough of the electorate to get Mr Trump elected, then, well, it’s mission accomplished.<\/p>\n

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During the campaign, Mr Trump repeatedly vowed to launch new prosecutions against his “crooked” opponent, whom he described as the most corrupt candidate in history.<\/p>\n

The first signs since the election that he was not so full-throated in his conviction came in an interview a week ago in which he said the Clintons were “good people”.<\/p>\n

Then on Tuesday morning, his spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway said there would be no further investigation into Mrs Clinton’s emails, in order to help her “heal”.<\/p>\n

A few hours later, Mr Trump told the New York Times<\/a> that a fresh inquiry was not off the table but unlikely because it would be divisive.<\/p>\n

“I want to move forward,” he said. “I don’t want to move back. I don’t want to hurt the Clintons, I really don’t.”<\/p>\n

Mrs Clinton had a private email server while secretary of state, actions the FBI said were careless but not criminal.<\/p>\n

In the same New York Times interview, Mr Trump distanced himself from white nationalists who performed Nazi salutes at a conference in Washington.<\/p>\n

He also said:<\/p>\n