‘Lynch’ pinhead Outrage over Don’s racially loaded hit on inquiry
It’s an illegal witch hunt. It’s a hoax. Now, impeachment is “a lynching.”
President Trump used the harshest and most racially insensitive term yet to attack the House impeachment inquiry Tuesday, sparking intense and bipartisan backlash.
“All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here — a lynching,” Trump wrote on Twitter. “But we will WIN!”
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle joined civil rights activists in condemning Trump’s usage of the phrase, which refers to one of the most painful chapters in U.S. history: The racist murders of thousands of black people in the Deep South during Jim Crow.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, the most powerful Republican in Congress who’s usually hard-pressed to criticize Trump in any way, acknowledged the president was wrong to use “lynching” as a political cudgel.
“Given the history in our country, I would not compare this to a lynching, no,” the Kentucky lawmaker told reporters at the U.S. Capitol. “That was an unfortunate choice of words.”
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries urged the president to apologize.
“Thousands of AfricanAmericans were slaughtered during the lynching epidemic in this country for no reason other than the color of their skin,” the New York Democrat told reporters on Capitol Hill. “The president should not compare a constitutionally mandated impeachment inquiry to such a dangerous and dark chapter of American history.”
Illinois Rep. Bobby Rush, a prominent civil rights activist in the 1960s who has introduced legislation that would make lynching a federal crime, was less polite.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” the 72-year-old
Democrat tweeted at Trump. “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. Delete this tweet.”
But the grim context of lynching was apparently lost on Trump and his allies.
“The president is not comparing what’s happened to him with one of our darkest moments in American history,” White House aide Hogan Gidley told reporters amid the outrage. “What he’s explaining clearly is the way he’s been treated by the media since he announced for president.”
South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s most loyal supporters, was one of the only members of Congress to defend the president.
“Yeah, this is a lynching in every sense,” Graham said of the impeachment probe. “This is un-American.”
Rep. Pete King condemned Trump’s word choice, but denied any ill intent on the president’s part.
“The president should have used another term, but he certainly had no racist intent,” the Long Island Republican told the Daily News.
The four other members of New York’s House GOP delegation did not return requests for comment.
Michael Steele, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee, was apoplectic.
“This is a lynching,” Steele tweeted at Trump and Graham, attaching a graphic black-and-white image of a young black man hung from a tree. “Trump, this is not happening to you and it’s pathetic that you act like you’re such a victim; but it did happen to 147 black people in your state, Lindsey. ‘A lynching in every sense’? You should know better.”
Parsing her words a bit more than Steele, Sen. Susan Collins tweeted that “lynching,” as a phrase, “brings back images of a terrible time in our nation’s history.”
“The president never should have made that comparison,” the Maine Republican added.