Donald Trump remains none too pleased about House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into him, and on Twitter early Tuesday he let it be known using a word many legislators have taken issue with.
The leader of the free world took to the social media website Oct. 22 to further air out his issues with the House looking into his possible impeachment.
“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!” he said.
It’s not the first time Trump has bashed the impeachment inquiry, which launched after a July 25 phone call the commander-in-chief made to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. The president urged Zelensky to investigate former Vice President and current Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden, and Biden’s son Hunter. The latter formerly served on a corporate board of an energy company in Ukraine.
Yet for all the times Trump has referred to the impeachment probe as a “fraud” or a “witch hunt,” using a term that references white mobs killing thousands of Black people by hanging with or without a legal trial has enraged many lawmakers.
“You think this impeachment is a LYNCHING? What the hell is wrong with you?” tweeted Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois. “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.”
California Congresswoman Rep. Karen Bass, who chairs the Congressional Black Caucus tweeted, “You are comparing a constitutional process to the PREVALENT and SYSTEMATIC brutal torture of people in THIS COUNTRY that looked like me?”
South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott also took issue with Trump’s use of the term but also affirmed the president likening the impeachment inquiry to a death sentence.
“There’s no question that the impeachment process is the closest thing to a political death row trial, so I get his absolute rejection of the process,” Yahoo reported he told reporters. “I wouldn’t use the word ‘lynching.'”
And it wasn’t just lawmakers speaking out. Others did too.
“The President of the United States comparing an impeachment inquiry to a #lynching is not a ‘distraction.’ It is a reflection of the very real trajectory of our nation and the very repugnant evil of racism…,” tweeted Bernice King, the daughter of late civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“A lynching! A lynching? …. The audacity of this White male supremacist,” tweeted Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, a professor at American University and author of the New York Times best-seller “How to be an Antiracist.”
Still, not everyone blasted the president. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican out of South Carolina who is a close ally of Trump’s, told reporters he felt the tweet was “pretty well accurate.”
“This is a lynching in every sense,” he added according to The Daily Beast. “This is un-American. I’ve never seen a situation in my lifetime as a lawyer where somebody’s accused of a major misconduct who cannot confront the accusers, call witnesses on their behalf, and have the discussion in the light of day so the public can judge.”
Graham seemingly is referring to the Democratic congressional chairmen taking depositions in closed sessions as they preserve the integrity of the investigation by ensuring that witnesses cannot coordinate their testimony through observing the accounts of others in open sessions.
