This Tuesday, President Donald Trump took his quest to make us all feel sorry for him to a new outrageous level with a tweet in which he compared the ongoing impeachment inquiry into him to a lynching. There is, of course, no legitimate grounds for that comparison by absolutely any stretch of the imagination. Thousands of black Americans were brutally murdered in lynchings throughout U.S. history. Trump is facing the duly proceeding consequences of his well-documented actions. Following his tweet, House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) (who himself is black) bluntly denounced Trump’s belligerence on CNN.
He told host John Berman, who’d noted that he ordinarily hesitated to read off Trump’s tweets on air but asked for comment from the South Carolina politician:
‘That is one word that no president ought to apply to himself. I’ve studied presidential history quite a bit, and I don’t know if we’ve ever seen anything quite like this… This president is hopefully an anomaly… I’m not just a politician up here, I’m a southern politician. I’m a product of the South. I know the history of that word. That is a word that we ought to be very, very careful about using.’
Watch:
At this point, Trump is completely detached from basic reality and floating off in his own personal egomaniacal fantasy at virtually every public opportunity, so there’s little apparent hope of Trump himself exemplifying that carefulness anytime soon.
He rambled on Twitter early Tuesday:
‘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!’
To be absolutely abundantly clear — Trump’s blanket assertions that he has been denied due process, fairness, or whatever else are absolutely false. To begin with, it’s the job of the House in an impeachment inquiry to collect evidence, which the current Democratic majority in the House is presently doing. It’s not their job to hold some kind of trial — that comes later.
Secondly, Trump has been given ample opportunity to cooperate with the ongoing Democratic inquiry, but he has flatly refused. He could have a voice in the actual substance of the process if he was willing to! But he’s not, for whatever reason, including that he seems to have a sense he needs to hide his behavior. He’s refusing to show up to the table and then complaining when things don’t go the way he likes.
The inquiry is proceeding anyway. This Tuesday, House investigators are hearing from acting Ukraine Ambassador Bill Taylor, whose testimony has already set people off.
Michigan’s Democratic Congressman Andy Levin said:
‘All I have to say is that in my 10 short months in Congress — it’s not even noon, right — and this is my most disturbing day in Congress so far. Very troubling.’
“All I have to say is that in my 10 short months in Congress — it’s not even noon, right — and this is my most disturbing day in Congress so far. Very troubling.” —Rep. Andy Levin, as he left Bill Taylor’s deposition this morning. @jesselnaranjo https://t.co/fmegayyjl6
— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) October 22, 2019
A source in the room added to one reporter that Taylor’s “opening statement was 15 pages long and prompted “a lot of sighs and gasps.”
