*Fueled by frustration over Donald Trump’s treatment of migrant families, Rep. Maxine Waters sparked heated debate in both parties on Monday after she encouraged people to keep harassing members of Trump’s administration in public spaces, like restaurants, department stores and gas stations.
Watch below:
The Democratic congresswoman from California made her comments at the end of a week when Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was heckled by activists at a restaurant in Washington, DC, and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant in Virginia.
Members of Rep. Waters’ own party – including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer – expressed disagreement with her tactics. But the response from Trump, himself, Waters said, was a complete mischaracterization of her remarks.
“Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party. She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max!” Trump tweeted on Monday.
Waters said she wasn’t calling for people to “harm” his supporters, but to publicly protest his Cabinet members.
“I believe in peaceful, very peaceful protests,” she told reporters on Capitol Hill. “I have not called for the harm of anybody. This President has lied again when he’s saying that I’ve called for harm.”
Earlier Monday, Rep. Pelosi pushed back against Rep. Waters’ call for public shunning of Trump officials by tweeting an article about Waters and wrote that Trump’s “daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are predictable but unacceptable.”
Sen. Schumer, meanwhile, took to the Senate floor with his criticism. “I strongly disagree with those who advocate harassing folks if they don’t agree with you,” he said.
“If you disagree with a politician, organize your fellow citizens to action and vote them out of office,” he added. “But no one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That’s not right. That’s not American.”
Waters, however, rejected the notion that Democrats have been critical of her comments. “They have not been,” she told reporters when asked about the criticism.
“Don’t put this on Nancy Pelosi,” she continued. “Don’t put this on anybody. Put it on Trump. Trump is the one who’s creating lies, trying to have people believe that I talked about harming people. There is nowhere in my statement — any time, any place — that I talked about harm.”
Rather, she argued, “our members of the Democratic caucus are talking about civility.”
“But protest is civility,” she added. “Protest is about peaceful resistance to the kind of actions that we are experiencing.”
Pressed on whether she supported the idea of kicking someone like Sanders out of a restaurant, Waters said she supports “their right to protest.”
“I have nothing to do with the way people decide to protest,” she said. “I have no way of telling people how to protest, what they should protest. Again, it started with the restauranteur, it started with people in a restaurant. I did not create that, I did not design that, but I support their right to protest.”
Waters described the attention around her comments as a distraction designed by the President. “Let’s not get diverted as the president is capable of doing, of diverting us from the real issue. This issue is not Maxine Waters. This issue is the children.”
She predicted the protests would stop when families were swiftly reunited at the border.
“I stand by my speech in saying that the protests have already started, they’re probably going to continue, but the way to deal with all of this is simply to come up with a credible plan.”
Later Monday, Rep. Waters doubled down on her defense while being interviewed by Chris Hayes on MSNBC:
“I did not call for harm for anybody, the President lied again.”@RepMaxineWaters is asked by @chrislhayes if she was calling for physical harm to be done to Trump supporters.#inners pic.twitter.com/jpVtxdnFhy
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 26, 2018
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