The impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump has been heating up, but recently Trump took to Twitter to make an odd comparison of the impeachment to something much more brutal—a lynching.
He said, “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!”
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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 22, 2019
African American politicians and others denounced Trump for the remark, highlighting of the past US history of lynching of black people, particularly in formerly pro-slavery Southern states.
“Lynching is a reprehensible stain on this nation’s history, as is this President. We’ll never erase the pain and trauma of lynching, and to invoke that torture to whitewash your own corruption is disgraceful,” Senator Kamala Harris, a Democratic presidential contender, wrote on Twitter.
But Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, whose home state of South Carolina has a large black population, defended Trump’s language, saying that “this is a lynching in every sense. This is un-American.”