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Trump calls impeach probe 'a lynching'
History is going to question whether or not this was just a partisan lynching ching. — Joe Biden in 1998, on impeac of President Bill Clinton (le
President Trump on Tuesday likened the impeachment effort against him to a “lynching,’’ prompting outcry — even though some Democrats had described Bill Clinton’s inquiry using the same word.
“So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the House, even by a tiny margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights. All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!” Trump seethed on Twitter.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) rushed to the president’s defense amid the avalanche of ensuing protests, calling Trump’s comparison “pretty well accurate.”
“This is a lynching, in a sense. This is un-American,’’ the senator said of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, which is investigating Trump’s request of the president of Ukraine to investigate political rival Joe Biden while holding back US military aid to the country.
Sen. Tim Scott, who is black and also a Republican from South Carolina, said that while he “wouldn’t use the word lynching,’’ he understood why Trump made the comparison.
“The impeachment process is the closest thing of a political death-row trial, so I get his absolute rejection of the process,” he said.
Democrats weren’t nearly as forgiving of Trump.
“You think this impeachment is a LYNCHING? What the hell is wrong with you?’’ Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, who is black, tweeted of the president.
“Do you know how many people who look like me have been lynched, since the inception of this country, by people who look like you.’’
Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger tweeted, “We can all disagree on the process, and argue merits.
“But never should we use terms like ‘lynching’ here. The painful scourge in our history has no comparison to politics, and @realDonaldTrump should retract this immediately. May God help us to return to a better way.”
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley later insisted to reporters, “The president’s not comparing what’s happened to him with one of our darkest moments in American history. He’s just not. What he was trying to point out, clearly, was that he has been attacked relentlessly by the mainstream media, without cause, without evidence, since the day he took over in this office.”
During President Bill Clinton’s impeachment in 1998, at least six Democrats used the terms “lynching” or “lynch mob” when referring to the probe — including current White House hopeful Joe Biden, who referred to impending proceedings as a “partisan lynching.”
Reps. Jerry Nadler and Gregory Meeks, too, used the word to describe the Clinton probe.
A lynching historically refers to a murder by a public mob, usually involving torture and hanging, carried out without trial. In the US, the heinous act was largely perpetrated by whites against blacks, mostly in the South, toward the end of the 19th century and through the middle of the 20th century as the country’s racial tensions raged.