Lindsey Graham Backs Trump on Impeachment: ‘This Is a Lynching in Every Sense’
Senator Lindsey Graham has agreed with President Donald Trump that Democrats’ impeachment push is ‘a lynching’. The President caused widespread outrage on Tuesday morning when he tweeted comparing the impeachment probe to lynching.
“This is a lynching in every sense,” Graham reportedly said, and according to a CBS reporter Graham said: “I think that’s pretty well accurate. This is a sham. This is a joke… So yeah, this is a lynching and in every sense this un-American.”
The South Carolina Republican has staunchly defended Trump throughout the Ukraine whistleblower scandal but this is an escalation of the GOP’s rhetoric. Actual lynchings involved murdering innocent people. Graham also said he could not understand African-American being offended by the term.
“No, I think lynching is being seen as somebody taking the law in their own hands and out to get somebody for no good reason,” he said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham backs Trump on calling the House impeachment process a “lynching.” Graham says: “This is a lynching in every sense.”
— Alex Bolton (@alexanderbolton) October 22, 2019
The other Republican senator from South Carolina, Tim Scott, who is the only black Republican senator, pushed back on the use of the word ‘lynching’.
“There’s no question that the impeachment process is the closet thing to a political death row trial, so I get his absolute rejection of the process. I wouldn’t use the word lynching,” Scott said.
However, Republican Representative Jim Jordan also defended Trump’s use of the term.
“The President’s frustrated,” Jordan said. “If you had to go through the three years that this – that the President’s had to live through – I think that just is an example of the frustration the President feels.”
Similarly, Republican Senator Ted Cruz called it ‘an objectively true description of what is happening.’
GOP Sen. Cruz: “obviously a word with significant historical freight. The connotation the president is carrying forward is a political mob seeking an outcome regardless of facts. And that I think is an objectively true description of what is happening in the House right now” https://t.co/UolbZZ28pF
— Burgess Everett (@burgessev) October 22, 2019
Not all Republicans were on board with the President’s language, however. Congressman Adam Kinzinger said there was ‘no comparison’.
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. https://t.co/URKNgxUfiv
— Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) October 22, 2019
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was less blunt but did distance himself from Trump somewhat, saying lynching ‘is not the language I would use’.
