“So some day,” the president wrote, “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!”
I never understood Clarence Thomas’ claim that he was victim of a “high-tech lynching,” but it worked for him, so why not Donald Trump? Well for one, Trump is white, and for another he is the son of privilege, and for another he is a bully, whose primary role is to threaten others. Justice Thomas might have been a bully, but the rest not so much.
About lynching, the record is solemnly portrayed at the Memorial for Peace and Justice (Montgomery, AL). “More than 4400 African 
American men, women, and children were hanged, burned alive, shot, drowned, and beaten to death by white mobs between 1877 and 1950.” The memorial of the lynchings spreads under an overhanging shelter and in a yard outside, 800 large oblong tombstones made out of corten steel, one for each county where lynchings took place in the United States. Eight hundred under the shelter and eight hundred outside waiting to be claimed by each county represented. You cannot leave this Memorial without feeling the historical burden of white terrorism.
White or not, I feel the offense of a privileged white President claiming to be lynched. It shows a callous disregard for a race that suffered actual lynchings on our soil. It could not be worse if the President claimed to suffer interrogatory torture, having never served in the armed forces. You can be sure American service men and women would protest that metaphor. Wait and see if he crosses that line.
The President can not resist taking on the role of a victim, as most bullies do once they have lost power or advantage. He is the “victim” of the media, of the liberals, of four young women of color in Congress, and of people he assigned to his own Cabinet, but purged when they criticized his decisions. His favorite word is “unfair.” He is relentlessly treated unfairly in the media, by Democrats, by those who left office and wrote books.
It will be our role and history’s to judge if President Trump was unfairly treated, but no one should accept the “lynching” plea. That is beyond the pale, insulting to the 4400 victims of perverse justice, who are memorialized in Montgomery. There is something grotesque in the image of a powerful white man standing alongside those images of oppression and terror. In claiming this distinction the President compounds his guilt, whatever it may be.