VALDOSTA — A commentator on a national news network used a well-known lynching in South Georgia to argue against President Donald Trump’s use of the L-word to describe the impeachment proceedings against him.

Tuesday on MSNBC, host Ali Velshi compared Trump’s use of the word “lynching” to the real-life death of Mary Turner, who was lynched by a mob on the Brooks-Lowndes County line in 1918. Earlier Tuesday, Trump had tweeted that his treatment by Democrats intent on impeaching him was a “lynching.”

Mary Turner lost her husband in a South Georgia lynching rampage in 1918. The 21-year-old black woman was eight months pregnant. She complained about the loss of her husband and vowed to bring charges against the men who killed him. 

She threatened to swear out warrants, which enraged locals. She fled for her life, only to be caught and taken to Folsom’s Bridge on Brooks and Lowndes counties’ shared border.

Velshi described for viewers how Turner died: A mob tied her ankles, hanging her upside down from a tree. They doused her with gasoline, burning away her clothes. They cut her baby from her and killed the unborn child.

Then they riddled Mary Turner’s body with bullets.

She and the baby were buried 10 feet away.

“That’s what lynching is, but President Trump used the word lynching as a way to identify himself as a victim,” Velshi said. “President Trump seems like he wants the world to believe he’s the most persecuted president in history. He seems to want to distract us from the ongoing impeachment inquiry. An impeachment inquiry is democracy in action, prescribed by the Constitution, checks and balances at its very core. It is not a lynching.”

Terry Richards is senior reporter at The Valdosta Daily Times.