Donald Trump calls Democrats’ impeachment push a ‘lynching’ as black Democrat erupts ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ and tells him ‘people who look like you’ murdered thousands of ‘people who look like me’
- Trump tweeted that Democrats’ impeachment inquiry is a ‘lynching’
- Compared one-sided congressional process to racial summary executions
- Tuskegee Institute says 3,446 African Americans were lynched between 1882 and 1968 in the U.S.
- Black Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush exploded on Twitter: ‘What the hell is wrong with you?’
Donald Trump called Democrats’ intensifying impeachment inquiry a ‘lynching’ on Tuesday, drawing a stark comparison between the murders of thousands of African-Americans and the political process that might cost him his job.
Venting on Twitter, he echoed complaints from other Republicans about the summary-judgment nature of some procedures House Democrats have adopted, including limiting their opponents’ ability to call witnesses or provide legal counsel to those who the majority grill behind closed doors.
‘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,’ the president wrote.
‘All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!’
President Donald Trump stepped into a racial minefield on Tuesday, calling Democrats’ move to impeach him a ‘lynching’
It’s highly unusual for white politicians to invoke lynchings; the mob-murder phenomenon took the lives of 3,446 African-Americans in the U.S. between 1882 and 1968
Illinois Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush, who is black, erupted.
‘You think this impeachment is a LYNCHING?’ he tweeted. ‘What the hell is wrong with you? 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.’
A search of White House records and interview transcripts indicates that the president hasn’t used that word publicly while in office before.
The Tuskegee Institute says 3,446 African Americans were lynched – hanged by angry mobs, and sometimes burned – between 1882 and 1968 in the United States. The total number is likely far higher.
Photos of lynchings were often passed around as souvenirs in the Deep South during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, showing burned and dismembered bodies of black men.
Congress made extrajudicial lynching murders a federal hate crime in 2018, equating them with other forms of racial terrorism.
Democratic Senators Kamala Harris of California,and Cory Booker of New Jersey introduced the bill along with South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott.
Illinois Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush erupted on Twitter, telling Trump that ‘people who look like you’ had lynched ‘people who look like me’
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Rep. Rush asked Trump
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas called attacks on him during his 1991 Senate confirmation hearings ‘a high-tech lynching,’ words that stung coming from a black nominee
The word ‘lynching’ is rarely invoked by white politicians. Its most famous recent usage in American politics came a quarter-century ago during confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Facing uncorroborated allegations of sexual harassment from a former workplace subordinate, Thomas called Democrats’ hearings – led by then-senator Joe Biden – ‘a national disgrace.’
‘From my standpoint, as a black American, as far as I’m concerned it is a high-tech lynching for uppity blacks who in any way deign to think for themselves, to do for themselves, to have different ideas,’ he said.
‘And it is a message that unless you kowtow to an old order, this is what will happen to you. You will be lynched, destroyed, caricatured by a committee of the U.S. Senate rather than hung from a tree.’