Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) announced Thursday that she is cancelling events due to a serious death threat and “hostile mail” she has been receiving.
"As the President has continued to lie and falsely claim that I encouraged people to assault his supporters, while also offering a veiled threat that I should 'be careful', even more individuals are leaving (threatening) messages and sending hostile mail to my office," she said.
"There was one very serious death threat made against me on Monday from an individual in Texas which is why my planned speaking engagements in Texas and Alabama were cancelled this weekend," she added. "This is just one in several very serious threats the United States Capitol Police are investigating in which individuals threatened to shoot, lynch, or cause me serious bodily harm."
Last week, Waters was criticized even by her Democratic colleagues for encouraging her supporters at a rally to harass Trump officials in protest over the administration’s policies.
"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," Rep. Waters told her supporters.
President Trump responded with a tweet Monday saying Waters was "calling for harm" to his supporters.
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!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2018
Waters clarified Monday that she was not calling for harm to Trump officials.
"I believe in peaceful, very peaceful protests," she told reporters. "I have not called for the harm of anybody. This President has lied again when he's saying that I've called for harm."
She added that it was the President who was "promoting violence."
Recently, protestors disrupted Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen’s dinner last week and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant in Lexington, Virginia on Friday because she worked for Trump.