President Donald Trump wants the world to know that he understands what it’s like to be castrated, his genitals stuffed into his mouth, hanged from a tree while a noose squeezes his neck, and doused with gasoline as crowds cheer his murder.
Yes, Trump likened the impeachment process to being lynched, ABC News reports.
“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,” he tweeted. “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!”
Reactions to Trump’s tweet were swift, as he most likely intended.
“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 @realDonaldTrump should retract this immediately. May God help us to return to a better way,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois) tweeted.
House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn said on CNN, “That is one word no president ought to apply to himself. You know, I’ve studied presidential history quite a bit, and I don’t know if we’ve ever seen anything quite like this.”
Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Illinois) also had strong words of condemnation for Trump, tweeting:
“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.”
Trump has repeatedly called the impeachment inquiry a “witch hunt,” a “fraud,” and a “coup,” but Tuesday marks the first time that he’s called in a lynching.
In September 2015, Trump retweeted a supporter calling his treatment by journalists during the 2016 election cycle as a “disgusting lynching.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham came to Trump’s defense.
“I think that’s pretty well accurate. This is a sham. This is a joke. I’m going to let the whole world know that if we were doing this to a Democratic president you would be all over me right now,” Graham told reporters. “This is a lynching, in a sense. This in un-American.”
But lynching is far from being un-American. From 1890 to 1900, an average of 175 African Americans were lynched each year. In the Deep South, someone was hanged or burned alive every four days from 1889 to 1929.
According to the Equal Justice Initiative’s research, “there were 4075 racial terror lynchings of African Americans in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia between 1877 and 1950 – at least 800 more lynchings of Black people in these states than previously reported in the most comprehensive work done on lynching to date.”
And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the modern-day lynchings, including that of Otis Byrd, 54, in Port Gibson, Mississippi, and Lennon Lacy, 17, who was found hanging from a tree in Bladenboro, North Carolina.
Black students across the nation are still being subjected to finding nooses on their doors—or around their necks, as ESSENCE has reported.
Trump has not responded to the criticism; instead, he has continued whining about the Democratic Party’s alleged mistreatment of him.