When Donald Trump called his impeachment a “lynching,” Democrats lost their minds — including Joe Biden.
However, after it was revealed that Biden himself referred to the Bill Clinton impeachment process as a “partisan lynching,” the Democrat candidate was forced to walk his comments back and apologize for his original remarks, Breitbart reports.
Common Turn of Phrase
When Joe Biden made his comments in 1998, nobody said a word about it, and rightfully so. He was a Democrat defending his president against a Republican House that had impeached Clinton.
If Trump is impeached in the House, Republicans will probably mount similar defenses. A “lynching” used in the manner both Trump and Biden used it is a simple turn of phrase employed for decades in this country to describe something akin to mob rule.
Fake Apology
When Trump called his impeachment a “lynching,” Joe Biden could not wait to use it as an angle for racial divide, tweeting that the current president’s remarks were “despicable.”
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
Then, people started to remember that Biden said something similar years ago, and the internet blew up with the 1998 video of the then-senator calling Clinton’s impeachment a “partisan lynching.”
Biden, of course, issued the mandatory apology as well as another shot at Trump.
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
Biden Not Alone
The use of this term by Biden was not a one-off in the party, either, as several Democrats have used this term or a variation of it during their political careers.
For instance, Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), during the Clinton impeachment, stated: “I am the president’s defender in the sense that I haven’t seen anything yet that would rise, in my opinion, to the level of impeachable offense. In pushing the process, in pushing the arguments of fairness and due process the Republicans so far have been running a lynch mob.”
Talk about a double standard.
