BY MARY MARGARET OLOHAN
Democrats compared President Bill Clinton’s impeachment
trial to a lynching as they debated whether to impeach him in 1998.
President Donald Trump similarly compared the impeachment
inquiry he’s facing to a lynching, and Democrats quickly condemned his comment
as racist.
“It makes you no better than those who burn crosses. It
makes you no better than those who wear hoods and white robes,” Democratic
Texas Rep. Al Green said Tuesday.
In December 1998, congressional representatives debated
whether or not to impeach a president for the first time since the House voted
to impeach President Andrew Johnson on Feb. 24, 1868, according
to The New York Times. Multiple representatives compared Clinton’s impeachment to a lynching, and several
others condemned it as a Republican attempt to remove Clinton from office.
Democratic Illinois Rep. Danny K. Davis condemned the
impeachment trial as “a lynching,” and former Democratic Rhode Island Rep.
Patrick J. Kennedy called it “a political lynching.”
Former Democratic Michigan Rep. John Conyers Jr. said
that he was seeing a “Republican coup d’etat” — a phrase that Democratic Reps.
Jerrold Nadler of New York and Maxine Waters of California both used as well.
“Impeachment was designed to rid this nation of traitors
and tyrants, not attempts to cover up an extramarital affair,” Conyers added in
1998.
Republicans want to “decapitate their Commander in
Chief,” former Democratic Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton said, and former Democratic
New Jersey Rep. Steven R. Rothman bemoaned the “Republican juggernaut, driven
by the right-wing.”
Trump compared the
Democrats’ impeachment probe to “lynching” in a Tuesday tweet, saying, “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
“How dare the president compare lynching to impeachment.
How dare he do this,” Green said on
the House floor Tuesday. “Does he not know the history of lynching in this
country? Does he not know that thousands of African Americans were lynched? Mob
violence. Does he not know this is the equivalent of murder? How dare the
president compare a lawful constitutional process to mob violence and lynching.”
“You are comparing a constitutional process to the
PREVALENT and SYSTEMATIC brutal torture of people in THIS COUNTRY that looked
like me?” tweeted Democratic California Rep. Karen Bass,
chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.
“Lord give me the strength to not take the bait but hold
this man accountable for every single thing he says and does,” tweeted Democratic Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley.
“I resent it tremendously,” Democratic House Majority
Whip James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, who is black, told
The Washington Post. “I think that what we see here once again is this
president attempting to change the narrative by using what I consider to be
real caustic terms in order to change the conversation. To compare the
constitutional process to something like lynching is far beneath the office of
president of the United States.”
“A lynching?!” tweeted President
and Executive Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for the Civil Rights Under Law
Kristen Clarke. “4,743 people were lynched in the US between 1882 — 1968, incl.
3,446 African Americans. Lynchings were crimes against humanity and an ugly
part of our nation’s history of racial violence and brutality.”
“They could have impeached in Obama for the IRS scandal,”
Trump told Hannity. “They could have impeached him for the guns, for whatever,
when the guns went all over the place and people getting killed … fast and
furious. They could have impeached him for many different things. They didn’t
impeach him. Then never even thought of impeaching him.”
Democrats have yet to vote to open a formal impeachment
inquiry and are holding a series of depositions with ambassadors who Democrats believe were involved in
Trump pressuring Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden.
