Biden Forced To Apologize for Calling Clinton Impeachment 'Lynching' but Claims What Trump Did Was Different
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden claims his own past usage of the term “lynching” to describe impeachment is different from President Donald Trump’s use of the same word this week.
According to the former vice president, that’s because Trump “chose his words deliberately.”
Trump on Tuesday used the word “lynching” in an angry tweet about House Democrats and their impeachment inquiry.
“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 wrote.
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
“All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here – a lynching. But we will WIN!”
Many Democrats immediately fired back to claim “lynching” is a word with such terrible racial overtones that Trump was hitting new levels of insensitivity by using it.
Rep. Bobby Rush of Illinois, a civil rights activist who founded a chapter of the Black Panthers, sharply criticized Trump over the tweet.
“You think this impeachment is a LYNCHING? What the hell is wrong with you?” he tweeted. “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.”
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. https://t.co/oTMhWo4awR
— Bobby L. Rush (@RepBobbyRush) October 22, 2019
Biden, sagging in the polls in his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination, piled on.
“Impeachment is not ‘lynching,’ it is part of our Constitution. Our country has a dark, shameful history with lynching, and to even think about making this comparison is abhorrent. It’s despicable,” he tweeted Tuesday in response to Trump.
Impeachment is not “lynching,” it is part of our Constitution. Our country has a dark, shameful history with lynching, and to even think about making this comparison is abhorrent. It’s despicable. https://t.co/QcC25vhNeb
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 22, 2019
But then, CNN unearthed a 1998 comment from Biden in connection with the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton.
“Even if the president should be impeached, history is going to question whether or not this was just a partisan lynching or whether or not it was something that in fact met the standard, the very high bar, that was set by the founders as to what constituted an impeachable offense,” Biden, then a senator from Delaware, said at the time.
Biden would go on to tweet out an apology.
But he made sure to differentiate his own misuse of the term to Trump, who he claimed “chose his words deliberately.”
“This wasn’t the right word to use and I’m sorry about that,” Biden said. “Trump on the other hand chose his words deliberately today in his use of the word lynching and continues to stoke racial divides in this country daily.”
This wasn’t the right word to use and I’m sorry about that. Trump on the other hand chose his words deliberately today in his use of the word lynching and continues to stoke racial divides in this country daily. https://t.co/mHfFC8HluZ
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) October 23, 2019
When asked about the whole controversy by TMZ, commentator Piers Morgan called criticisms of Trump’s use of the word “disingenuous,” noting it had been used for years by politicians from both sides.
Although Morgan said the comment is “the wrong kind of language,” his bottom line was that outrage over the tweet was “one of those fake scandals.”
The Washington Post delved into the use of the words “lynching” or “lynch mob” in the context of the Clinton impeachment, and found that five other Democratic lawmakers — Rep. Danny Davis of Illinois, former Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington, Rep. Gregory Meeks, former Rep. Charles Rangel and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (the last three are all from New York) — used such terms.
Rangel, Meeks and Davis are black.
Nadler is currently chair of the House Judiciary Committee, which has been investigating Trump. Meeks is also still in Congress, as is Davis, though McDermott and Rangel have since retired.
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