Newt Gingrich defended President Trump for calling House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry a “lynching” by arguing that early American movies showed white people getting lynched.
“I’m going to be very politically incorrect,” the former speaker of the house said Tuesday on ABC’s The View. “Most of the early American movies on lynching were about lynching white people.”
Gingrich, 76, initially compared Trump’s saying “lynching” to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ use of the word when Anita Hill accused him of sexual misconduct. He pivoted to talking about movies after co-host Sunny Hostin objected that Thomas was a black man using the word.
The former presidential candidate also said that Italian Americans made up a large percentage of lynchings and that it was not a uniquely black experience.
Gingrich’s comments come after Trump said that Republicans were witnessing a “lynching” by Democrats.
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
Democrats hit back at the president, saying it was wrong for him to use the term, which has commonly been associated with the murders of black Americans during the Jim Crow era.
