President Trump received pushback Tuesday from the mayor of Salem, Massachusetts, for comparing efforts to impeach him with the witch trials held in the city centuries earlier.
Salem Mayor Kim Driscoll criticized Mr. Trump on Tuesday after the president drew parallels between the impeachment proceedings threatening his presidency with the witch trials that resulted in 19 innocent people being convicted and killed.
“[W]ill they ever learn some history?” Ms. Driscoll asked on Twitter. “This situation is much different than the plight of the witch trial victims, who were convicted using spectral evidence + then brutally hanged or pressed to death. A dubious legal process that bears no relation to televised impeachment.”
“To see both the president and his [supporters] using the Witch Trials is offensive to the descendants, those victims that this their legacy is being twisted in this way. People in Salem want this history remembered so that it acknowledges going forward what never, ever should happen again,” added Ms. Driscoll, a Democrat, Boston’s WCVB reported.
Mr. Trump made the comparison in a scorching letter sent earlier Tuesday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, California Democrat, on the eve of the House of Representatives voting on articles of impeachment.
“More due process was afforded to those accused in the Salem Witch Trials,” Mr. Trump argued in the letter, imploring Mrs. Pelosi and fellow Democrats to “immediately cease this impeachment fantasy.”
Mrs. Pelosi described the letter later Tuesday as “really sick.”
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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