WASHINGTON — Stirring up painful memories of America’s racist past, President Donald Trump on Tuesday compared the Democratic-led impeachment inquiry to a lynching, a practice once widespread across the South in which angry mobs killed thousands of black people.
The use of such inflammatory imagery to lash out at the House investigation into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine triggered an outcry from Democratic legislators, some mild rebukes but also some agreement from the president’s Republican allies and condemnation from outside the Washington Beltway.