Kamala Harris Calls Trump Comparing The Impeachment Inquiry To Lynching 'Disgraceful'

Witch hunt. Hoax. Treason. Coup. Scam. These are just some of the words President Donald Trump has used attempt to discredit the  impeachment inquiry against him. None of these have been accurate — and that hasn’t stopped him from adding another word into the lexicon of inappropriate terms that misrepresent the case at hand.


On October 22, Trump asked Republicans to come to his political defense by talking about the Democrats, in their impeachment inquiry, were conducting a lynching, which is a term entrenched in racial prejudice and violence that is largely involving the extrajudicial killings of Black Americans.


“So some day, if a Democrat becomes President and the Republicans win the Home, even by a small margin, they can impeach the President, without due process or fairness or any legal rights,” Trump tweeted of the political method of impeaching a president. Speaker of the Home Nancy Pelosi filed a formal impeachment inquiry against Trump in late September for potential acts of treason at the President’s hands. “All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here - a lynching. Yet we'll WIN!”


While Trump has continuously used improper words to describe the impeachment inquiry, this tweet takes it to new levels. According to the NAACP, thousands of people were murdered through the lynching in the U.S., The vast majority of whom were Black. Racist groups often perpetrated lynchings in public option group in attempt to terrorize Black Residents of the
U.S., Especially right following the Emancipation Proclamation started freeing slaves in 1863. One of the last known American lynchings occurred in 1981, as soon as members of the Ku Klux Klan murdered a 19-year-old named Michael Donald in Active, Alabama.


“The President of the United States comparing an impeachment inquiry to a #lynching isn't a ‘distraction,’” Bernice King, a minister, activist, and daughter of Martin Luther King Jr. Tweeted. “It is a reflection of the very real trajectory of our country and the very repugnant evil of racism, which still permeates both legislation and language in the United States.”


Some Republican lawmakers came out against Trump’s statement, including Residence Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), who told CNN, “I would not use that language.” He added that he still considered the impeachment was unfair, a qualifier several Republican lawmakers are affording the President. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) mentioned the president was “frustrated.”


Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a top Trump ally, came to the President’s defense, telling reporters: “This is a lynching in each sense. This is un-American.” He did not decorative on how he considered the formal process by which members of the Residence and Senate decide whether the President has committed impeachable crimes, and whether he should be removed from office, would be allegorized as a racist and specifically anti-Black hate crime. His own state of South Carolina last seen a lynching in 1947’s last known lynching, once in which white males murdered 25-year-old Willie Earl, occurred in 1947. The 28 boys on trial were all acquitted of any crime.


On the other side of the aisle, yet, were Democratic presidential primary candidates. Several of those released statements and tweets condemning Trump and his use of the word, and pointed out that this sort of language is particularly horrifying from a President who has consistently stoked racist tensions in the U.S. — From referring to immigrants crossing the border as a “infestation” to calling African countries “shitholes” and saying immigrants from Nigeria would never wish to “go back to their huts.”


As even the dictionary pointed out, even metaphorical invocations of lynchings are rooted in racist hate crimes that targeted Black Residents of the
U.S. Specifically. In September, a white person allegedly hanged a noose in an elevator at the University of Illinois, ostensibly to intimidate Black people on campus. It was the latest of a string of such racist incidents; nooses have also recently been noticed at Stanford University, American University, the University of Maryland, Kansas State University, and at the National Museum for African American History and Culture.