Donald Trump has come under fire after he referred to impeachment proceedings against him as a “lynching”.
The US president wrote on Twitter: “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.”
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Although Trump has previously described the impeachment plan as a “witch hunt”, this is the first time he has used “such a racially charged word” to describe his predicament, says The Guardian.
Responding on Twitter, Bobby Rush, a Democrat from Illinois, called on Trump to delete the tweet and asked: “What the hell is wrong with you?”
Rush added: “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?”
Karen Bass, the California representative and chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, told CNN that Trump’s tweet was the latest instalment of him throwing “racial bombs” to give “red meat” to his base.
South Carolina representative James Clyburn told the same broadcaster: “That is one word that no president ought to apply to himself. I’m not just a politician … I’m a product of the south. I know the history of that word.”
Trump received some support too. Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, said the process of impeachment was “a lynching in every sense”. But key Trump ally Jim Jordan refused to say whether the tweet was appropriate, stating only that “the president is frustrated”.
New York Times columnist Charles Blow had no such hesitation. “Lynching?!” he wrote on Twitter. “Sir, don’t you DARE invoke the darkness of America’s viciousness toward black people to defend your corruption. How dare you?!…”
According to the Tuskegee Institute, 3,446 African-Americans were lynched between 1882 and 1968 in the US, but many believe that the total is far higher.
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