Democrats, Republicans, and President Trump himself are not happy with Rep. Maxine Waters.
Waters (D-CA) has long opposed Trump and his policies, calling for his impeachment and accusing him of aligning with Russia’s autocratic president Vladimir Putin.
This past weekend, Waters told attendees at a Keep Families Together rally in Los Angeles to resist the president’s intolerance by publicly confronting and harassing his Cabinet members and affiliates.
“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up,” Waters said to an enthusiastic crowd. “And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
This comes in response to the recent controversy surrounding the administration separating migrant families, mainly from Central America, at the United States-Texas border as part of a “zero tolerance” migration policy.
Despite signing an executive order to end the separations, Trump has avoided making a clear plan to unite the more than 2,000 migrant children scattered in various shelters and foster homes around the country.
Apparently, Waters’ calls for accountability are working.
On June 19, Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, was confronted by local members of the Democratic Socialists of America chanting “Shame,” and “Sanctuary for all” as she ate dinner in Washington, DC’s MXDC Cocina Mexicana Restaurant. Two days later, the chapter along with allies went to Nielsen’s family home in Alexandria, Virginia and played recordings of detained children.
Senior Advisor Stephen Miller was also confronted while dining at a Mexican restaurant.
The tension came to a head when press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave while in a rural Virginian restaurant because she worked for an “inhuman” and “unethical” administration.
Waters’ sentiments have not fared well with many Republicans and Democrats who fear that this mentality is against the country’s democratic values.
One of these critics is House speaker Paul Ryan, who demanded that the representative apologize for her comments.
“That’s dangerous for our society, that’s dangerous for our democracy,” Ryan said during a House Republican conference meeting Tuesday. “And there’s just no place for that in our public discourse.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is among Democrats who also refute Waters’ comments, calling them “not American.”
Other critics have said that Waters’ is “encouraging violence,” and being “uncivil.”
As expected, President Trump took to Twitter Tuesday to share his opinions on the matter, skewing Waters’ words and using them to condemn the Democratic party as a whole.
“Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party,” he tweeted. “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!”
Still, Waters is not backing down to the condemnation.
Two days after the rally, she told MSNBC that she has “no empathy” for Trump’s administration who continue to let the president go unchecked.
“We cannot wait until the next presidential election,” she said. “We’ve got to resist [Donald Trump], and I want to see him impeached.”
