It's been almost six years since Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) demanded her supporters harass officials working for then President Donald Trump. It wasn't a good look for the congresswoman, to say the least. Making it even more of an infamous moment, though, is her hypocrisy. This week, a video conversation she had has making the rounds over X, as people called her out for daring to complain about supposed racism towards her when people dare to express their displeasure with the congresswoman.
"As a member of Congress, when people, you know, who evidently had a racist attitude, and recently one of them even confronted me in a restaurant. And they don't say racist things, but what they say is they don't like something I said, they don't like a position that I took, but you know that, you know, if you were not black, you would not be approached that way."
How does Waters know that she would "be approached that way?" Is Waters trying to claim there that any criticism towards her is racist? That would make her not only a hypocrite, but someone playing the victim there as well.
Get in the faces of public officials!!
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) April 10, 2024
Wait, not MINE!! That’s racist! https://t.co/wb2Uf0FslR
But then let’s revisit what happened all those years ago. "Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. 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. We’ve got to get the children connected to their parents," Waters screeched into the microphone as she riled up a crowd in California back in June 2018.
Maxine Waters calls for attacks on Trump administration: "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." pic.twitter.com/cJu3xWSxUi
— News Snapper (@newssnapper) June 24, 2018
She also doubled down about her insistence to be "more confrontational" with Republicans, while also joking about the incidence months later as she defended her remarks and claimed what she was doing did not amount to violent rhetoric. It was a claim she continued to insist upon years later.
While receiving an award at the Stonewall Young Democratic Club awards event in September of 2018, she joked after recapping what she said, "of course the lying president [Trump] said that I had threatened all of his constituents. I did not threaten his constituents and supporters. I do that all the time, but I didn't do that that time."
"What bothered me so much was, they tried to frame that as violence. That's not violence," she claimed, also later insisting that "I do not advocate violence." Perhaps most telling of all with regards to the incident she just recently complained about, is that she also told the crowd how important is was to "tell people the difference between violence and incivility and protesting."
Evidently, she herself did not learn such a lesson.
Although this is perhaps Waters' most notorious incident, it wasn't even her most recent one. In April 2021, when Derek Chauvin was on trial for murder and manslaughter charges over the death of George Floyd, she crossed state lines to call for riots to go on in Minneapolis where the trial took place. Minnesota National Guardsmen were even later shot at. She once again defended her remarks, and the White House did not condemn them. A censure motion brought against her by then House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) failed.