Fireworks erupted when Newt Gingrich appeared on ABC’s The View today. The former Republican House Speaker personally led the charge to impeach President Bill Clinton; he went on the talkshow to promote his new book which Whoopi Goldberg refused to state the title of since it included Donald Trump’s name (instead, she called it “You-Know-Who vs. China: Facing America’s Greatest Threat”).

Goldberg began the segment by bringing up Trump’s tweet this morning on impeachment. The president caused a stir by calling the impeachment inquiry a “lynching.” Goldberg shook her head and said, “It’s a word that nobody, you know, wants to hear. This was not a good choice of words for him, do you think?”

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Gingrich responded, “Well, it’s exactly the same term that Clarance Thomas used when he said he was guilty of a white-collar lynching.” The Supreme Court justice previously used the term “high-tech lynching” to describe the sexual harassment allegations hurled at him by Anita Hill while he was being confirmed.

Goldberg asked if the term was “right then,” to which Gingrich responded, “I think it was right, sure.”

“Put yourself for a second in Trump’s shoes,” Gingrich told the hosts. “I think part of what you have is a guy here who’s just really deeply frustrated that no matter where he turns, you know, the fight keeps going on.”

Newt Gingrich, the Republican Speaker of the House who led the impeachment of Bill Clinton in 1998, tells Whoopi Goldberg on #TheView that Trump is justified in calling impeachment a lynching because he’s “really deeply frustrated.”

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— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) October 22, 2019

Later in the segment Goldberg said, “Listen, Newt, you and I have known each other a long time, and when a giant six-foot white guy says I’m being lynched here, you understand why it’s a little bit like, listen man, you’re not being lynched here, you are being held to the standard we’re supposed to be holding every president to.”

Gingrich said he was going to be “very politically incorrect” by pointing out that “most of the early American movies on lynching were about lynching white people.”

Goldberg said, “You know, it may not be a totally black experience. But we’re kind of the only folks that didn’t come out from under the experience that was put on us, as you well know.”

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