Here’s how Ayanna Pressley responded to Donald Trump’s ‘lynching’ tweet
"Don’t take your eye off the ball family."
Rep. Ayanna Pressley has repeatedly said she won’t let President Donald Trump’s most inflammatory remarks take her focus away from more substantive issues.
Some days are apparently harder than others.
Trump called House Democrats’ impeachment investigation a “lynching” Tuesday morning, likening the congressional probe into the Republican president’s efforts to persuade the Ukrainian government to prosecute a political rival to the country’s dark history of racism-fueled killings. It was a comparison that was condemned Tuesday by Democrats and a number of Republicans.
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
The NAACP estimates that 4,743 lynchings were carried out in the United States from 1882-1968, with black people accounting for nearly three-quarters of those murdered.
Pressley tweeted Tuesday morning that she hadn’t even had coffee yet before Trump had begun “tossing the word ‘lynching’ around.” The Massachusetts congresswoman called the president a “bigoted man,” noting his unrecanted calls for the exonerated “Central Park 5” to be executed. But she then returned the focus to the ongoing impeachment probe.
“Lord give me the strength to not take the bait but hold this man accountable for every single thing he says and does,” Pressley wrote.
In a follow-up tweet, the Dorchester Democrat noted that Bill Taylor, a “major witness” and diplomat in Ukraine, was testifying to House members Tuesday, as part of the impeachment inquiry. Taylor had privately expressed concern about Trump’s effort to pressure Ukraine to investigate unsubstantiated claims of corruption against Joe Biden and his son Hunter. In his closed-door testimony Tuesday, Taylor reportedly said he was told that Trump insisted on withholding military aid to Ukraine in return for a public declaration that the country would investigate the Bidens.
“Don’t take your eye off the ball family,” Pressley wrote.
Don’t take your eye off the ball family. A major witness is testifying today and he’s using a predictable play to try to distract & divide. We see right through him. https://t.co/nLoxQOMd6I
— Ayanna Pressley (@AyannaPressley) October 22, 2019
Pressley was hardly the only local elected official to condemn Trump’s remarks Tuesday, the latest in what is reportedly a calculated effort by the president to stoke racial tensions for potential political gain.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said it was “beyond disgraceful” for Trump to invoke the history of lynching as a defense for his alleged crimes and retweeted three fellow Democratic presidential candidates of color who blasted the tweet.
“Nobody is above the law, not even the president of the United States,” Warren wrote.
Lynching is a horrific stain on our country’s history, and it is beyond disgraceful for Donald Trump to invoke one to avoid being held accountable for his crimes.
Nobody is above the law, not even the president of the United States.
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) October 22, 2019
Rep. Katherine Clark, a Melrose Democrat and vice chair of the party’s congressional caucus, called Trump’s remarks “particularly grotesque,” given his personal history on the subject of race.
It is particularly grotesque for Trump, who defends racial discrimination, courts white supremacists, and targets people of color, to invoke lynching to describe a constitutional impeachment inquiry. https://t.co/CFxUxSWxcP
— Katherine Clark (@WhipKClark) October 22, 2019
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley told reporters that Trump’s tweet was an attempt to convey how he feels he has been treated and that the president “has used many words to describe the way he has been relentlessly attacked,” according to a pool report Tuesday.
“The president’s not comparing what ‘s happened to him with one of our darkest moments in American history,” Gidley said. “He’s just not.”
For her part, Pressley — one of the House’s earliest advocates for impeachment — has previously emphasized the Democratic legislative agenda in the face of Trump’s personality-driven attacks.
“I encourage the American people and all of us — in this room and beyond — to not take the bait,” she told reporters in July, after the president suggested Pressley and three other freshman Democratic congresswomen of color should “go back” to their countries.
“This is a disruptive distraction from the issues of care, concern and consequence to the American people that we were sent here with a decisive mandate from our constituents to work on,” Pressley said at the time.
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