US President Donald Trump has likened the impeachment investigation into his dealings with Ukraine to a "lynching" in a tweet that drew condemnation for his inflammatory reference to decades of killings of thousands of black Americans.
Republican Trump issued his comment on Twitter just before Tuesday's closed-door testimony by William Taylor, a US diplomat expected to be an important witness in the inquiry led by Democrats in the US House of Representatives.
Lawmakers planned to ask Taylor, the acting ambassador at the US embassy in Ukraine, about Trump's withholding of security assistance for the government in Kiev, which Taylor called "crazy".
"All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here - a lynching. But we will WIN!" Trump wrote on Twitter.
Trump's comment was immediately condemned as unbecoming of a president.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina was on CNN minutes after Trump posted the tweet, and called it offensive. He noted that no other president who has faced an impeachment inquiry or the inevitability of one - citing Andrew Johnson, Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon - ever resorted to such racially charged language in an attempt to cast himself as a victim.
Democratic Representative Bobby L. Rush echoed Clyburn's sentiment, blasting Trump in his own tweet.
"You think this impeachment is a LYNCHING? What the hell is wrong with you?" the black lawmaker wrote, addressing the president. "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."
George Conway, husband of senior White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway, tagged the president in a tweet and told him, "You truly are deranged."
Conservative commentator Erick Erickson was one of the first notable Republicans to call out Trump, declaring on Twitter: "It is not a lynching.
"Let's not start dropping words that are important with real historic meaning where we water them down to nothing," he wrote.
"For Trump to characterise a legal impeachment inquiry as a lynching shows a complete disrespect for the thousands of black people lynched - murdered - throughout our nation's history in acts of racism and hatred," said Karen Baynes-Dunning, interim president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which advocates for equal opportunity and fights bigotry.
Some Republicans defended Trump's use of the word, instead blaming journalists or Democrats conducting the investigation.
"It shows a lot of things about our national media. When it's about Trump, who cares about the process, as long as you get him. So, yeah, this is a lynching in every sense. This is un-American," Republican senator Lindsey Graham told reporters.
Senator Tim Scott, one of two black Republicans in congress, said, "I get his absolute rejection of the process" but said he would not use the word lynching.
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Trump was expressing his feelings.
"The president was clearly articulating the way he feels and the way you guys have treated him from day one," Gidley told reporters at the White House.
Democratic African-American lawmakers said they were not surprised, given Trump's record of inflammatory statements.
"For him to say something like that was disgusting, reflects his insensitivity toward the historical tragedies of this country and I'm just totally, I would not say surprised or shocked, but just very, very disappointed," said Representative Barbara Lee.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries said he hoped Trump apologised.
"The president should not compare a constitutionally mandated impeachment inquiry to such a dangerous and dark chapter of American history. It's irresponsible for him to do so and I hope that he will apologise."
Australian Associated Press
