CNN host Christiane Amanpour suggested Tuesday that chants of ‘lock her up’, directed toward Hillary Clinton, a staple of Trump supporters at his raucous rallies, constitutes ‘hate speech’ and that the FBI should work to “shut down that language”. 

Amanpour was interviewing former FBI head James Comey, and asked him if he would work to censor the chants and the sentiment behind them if he were still in charge of the intelligence agency.

“Do you, in retrospect, wish that people like yourself, the head of the FBI, the people in charge of law and order, had shut down that language, that it was dangerous potentially, that it could have created violence, that it’s kind of hate speech? Should that have been allowed?” Amanpour asked.

While he noted that “That’s not a role for government to play,” Comey described the chants as “misleading” and an example of “demagoguery”.

“The beauty of this country is people can say what they want, even if it’s misleading and it’s demagoguery.” Comey said.

“The people who should have shut it down were Republicans, who understand the rule of law and the values that they claim to stand for. Shame on them, but it wasn’t a role for government to play.” Comey added.

Elsewhere during the interview, Amanpour suggested that Comey to blame for Trump winning the election because days beforehand he reopened the FBI investigation into Clinton’s email server.

“Do you ever think that you might be responsible for the election of President Trump?” She asked, adding “Does that keep you up at night?”

Amanpour also asked “Are you worried in hindsight that you didn’t bust any norm, or you didn’t tell the people that you were investigating Russian interference before the election?”

A defensive Comey replied “What would we disclose? It was all classified to begin with?” adding that talking about the investigation “would have been irresponsible in the extreme.”

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