Maxine Waters could face a censure and lose her committee assignments after backlash ensued for ‘inciting violence’ by telling protesters in Minneapolis to get ‘more confrontational’ as the trail of Derek Chauvin wraps up.
The California representative traveled to Minneapolis over the weekend before closing arguments began Monday in Chavin’s trial, where he stands charged with murdering George Floyd during an arrest on May 25.
Waters, 82, broke the city’s curfew by taking to the streets Saturday night to join protesters, where she was videotaped saying she hoped Chauvin is found guilty.
‘I am not happy that we have talked about police reform for so long,’ Waters said.
‘If we don’t [get a guilty verdict], we cannot go away. We’ve got to stay on the street,’ she added.
‘We’ve got to stay on the street and we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational,’ Waters demanded of rioters. ‘We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.’
As the city awaited a verdict in Chauvin’s trial, Black Lives Matter rioters took to the streets – breaking curfew, burning buildings, looting and demanding he be found guilty.
California Congressman Maxine Waters was in Minnesota on Saturday evening, saying that demonstrators needed to ‘get more active, more confrontational’
In what has been dubbed Operation Safety Net, more than 3,000 National Guard members were activated in the city on top of the 1,100 public safety agency officers from across Minnesota.
Hours after Waters’ comments, two members of the National Guard were injured, though not critically, in a drive-by shooting around 4:20 a.m. Sunday morning.
Waters supported impeachment against Donald Trump after he used similar language to her’s before the January 6 Capitol attack. Democrats claim his words ‘incited an insurrection’, and therefore were grounds for his removal from office.
‘If you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore,’ Trump said during a rally before a mob of his supporters descended on the Capitol.
Joe Biden’s White House has refused to condemn Waters’ call for more violent riots and confrontations between protesters and law enforcement.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is leading the charge for Congress to take action against Waters.
McCarthy claimed Monday that between 10-15 Democrats could vote for his motion to officially censure Waters for her Saturday night comments.
During an interview on Fox News Primetime, the California congressman said Waters ‘believes there is value in violence’.
‘And now what she has said has even put doubt into a jury,’ McCarthy said, referring to the George Floyd jury.
‘You had a judge announce that it was wrong,’ he continued. ‘I think this takes action especially when she has a pattern of this behavior.’
The congresswoman has a long history of defending violent protests and riots – and using inciteful language to encourage such acts.
CALLED LA RIOTS A ‘REBELLION’
Waters refused to call the violence in Los Angeles in 1992 a riot, instead dubbing it a ‘rebellion’ – even though her office was burned down during the unrest.
The riots ensued after the acquittal of four LAPD officers who beat Rodney King, a black man. A video of the incident was captured and circulated.
‘There are those who would like for me … to tell people to go inside, to be peaceful, that they have to accept the verdict,’ Waters said during a 1992 press conference.
‘I accept the responsibility of asking people not to endanger their lives. I am not asking people not to be angry,’ she continued.
‘I am angry, and I have a right to that anger, and the people out there have a right to that anger.’
The death toll from the riots reached 64, which included nine shot by law enforcement. Of the dead, 28 were black. Reports at the time indicate as many as 2,383 people were injured in some capacity.
Waters insisted that the majority of the looting in LA during that time was just so poor mothers could get necessities for their children.
Waters and then-President Bill Clinton tour Los Angeles in May 1992 after rioters burnt buildings to the ground in violent riots
At the time, she called the violence ‘a spontaneous reaction to a lot of injustice and a lot of alienation and frustration.’
‘There were mothers who took this as an opportunity to take some milk, to take some bread, to take some shoes. Maybe they shouldn’t have done it, but the atmosphere was such that they did it. They are not crooks,’ Waters defended while speaking on Michael Jackson’s KABC radio talk show in 1992.
She also told a Los Angeles Times reporter at the time: ‘One lady said her children didn’t have any shoes. She just saw those shoes there, a chance for all of her children to have new shoes. God damn it! It was such a tear-jerker. I might have gone in and taken them for her myself.’
Waters said her office burning down in the riots was not personal. She said she wasn’t ‘angry at all’ and the office was just ‘one of the victims of the rebellion.’
TOLD SUPPORTERS TO PUBLICLY CONFRONT TRUMP OFFICIALS
In June 2018, Waters told people to harass Trump cabinet members and other administration officials in public after the then-president imposed a ‘zero tolerance’ policy for illegal immigration at the southern border.
‘Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up,’ Waters said during a rally in LA.
‘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,’ she said.
Trump’s policies led to the separation of parents from their children after illegally crossing into the U.S.
‘Mr. President, we will see you every day, every hour of the day, everywhere that we are to let you know you cannot get away with this,’ Waters said at the rally.
The congresswoman’s comments came after several Trump officials had been recently confronted in public – especially while dining at restaurants.
In June 2018, then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her family were asked to leave The Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia – where they were dining that night because gay employees were uncomfortable with her politics.
Also that month, Trump’s then-Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was heckled out of a Mexican eatery a couple blocks from the White House. A video emerged with protesters chanting ‘shame’ at Nielsen while she was dining.
Two days before that, White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller was called a fascist while he was eating at a different Mexican restaurant, also in D.C.
The same day as Waters’ rally, the congresswoman appeared on MSNBC to encourage more confirmation.
‘The people are going to turn on them. They’re going to protest,’ she said. ‘They’re going to absolutely harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the President, ‘No, I can’t hang with you.”
WATERS SAYS SHE THREATENS TRUMP SUPPORTERS ‘ALL THE TIME’
Trump suggested in a 2018 tweet that Waters’ comments inciting confrontations were directed at his supporters, instead of those working in his administration.
But Waters said in September 2018 remarks, while she does threaten Trump supporters ‘all the time,’ she was not in that instance.
‘I did not threaten constituents and supporters. I do that all the time, but I didn’t do that that time,’ Waters said to laughter from a crowd in LA.
‘What bothered me so much was, they tried to frame that as violence,’ Waters said. ‘That’s not violence.’
‘The poster child for violence is the President of the United States. He’s the one who threatens,’ she continued. ‘Don’t forget at his rallies, when he said go ahead and beat them up, I’ll take them out on a stretcher.’
‘I do not advocate violence,’ she said. ‘I do not believe you should hit, kick, shoot,’ Waters said. ‘We have to tell people the difference between violence and incivility and protesting.’
‘I said, if you see them anywhere, if you see them in a restaurant, if you see them in a department store, even at a gasoline station, just tell them, you’re not welcome here or anywhere,’ Waters recalled.
‘Of course it frightened a lot of people.’
TELLS GOP REP. JIM JORDAN TO ‘SHUT YOUR MOUTH’
Waters told Republican Congressman Jim Jordan to ‘shut your mouth’ when he asked Dr. Anthony Fauci when the pandemic will end and America will get their ‘liberties’ back.
The House Coronavirus Crisis Subcommittee descended into chaos last Thursday when Jordan probed Facui on restrictions that have been in place for a year.
‘We had 15 days to slow the spread turned into one year of lost liberty,’ Jordan said during the session. ‘What metrics, what measures, what has to happen before Americans get their freedoms back?’
‘You’re indicating liberty and freedom. I look at it as a public health measure to prevent people from dying and going to hospital,’ Fauci told Jordan and said the U.S. will return to normal when enough people are vaccinated.
Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters (right) told Republican Congressman Jim Jordan (left) to ‘shut your mouth’ when he asked Dr. Fauci when America will get their ‘liberties’ back
‘You don’t think Americans’ liberties have been threatened the last year, Dr. Fauci?’ Jordan added. ‘They’ve been assaulted!’.
Fauci then told Jordan ‘you’re making this personal’ when the Ohio representative said no one was allowed to criticize him.
‘You need to respect the chair and shut your mouth!’ Waters then interjected. It came after she opened her testimony by saying: ‘Dr. Fauci, I love you.’
