Today president Drumpf deployed his most incendiary rhetoric against House of Representatives impeachment inquiry referring to the impeachment inquiry as a “lynching”
Drumpf frequently used the phrase “witch hunt” and other politically explosive language to denigrate the impeachment inquiry.
In a tweet Drumpf wrote:
“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!”
Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.),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 @realDonaldDrumpf should retract this immediately. May God help us to return to a better way.”
Rep. Bobby Rush from Illinois tweeted:
“You think this impeachment is a LYNCHING? 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.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) tweeted today:
“I don’t know how many times we have to say that the President is racist and unfit to serve,”
In a statement at CNN today, the highest-ranking African American in Congress Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), denounced Drumpf’s message today, saying that the three U.S. presidents who previously faced impeachment threats would not have likened their situations to lynchings.
And he added:
“That is one word no president ought to imply on himself… I’ve studied presidential history quite a bit, and I don’t know if we’ve ever seen anything quite like this. Andrew Johnson never would’ve described what was happening to him this way, and certainly Bill Clinton didn’t, nor did Nixon. This president is hopefully an anomaly… I’m a product of the South. I know the history of that word. That is a word that we ought to be very, very careful about using.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) tweeted:
‘Lynching’ brings back images of a terrible time in our nation’s history, and the President never should have made that comparison.”
