Maxine Waters Incites the Mob
Wherever there’s a fire, there too is a particular California Democrat with a can of gasoline.
In 2000, when George W. Bush spoke to the NAACP about “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” he wasn’t talking about Democrat Representative Maxine Waters. But he might just as well have. For years now, Waters has gotten a pass on her hate-filled and inciteful rhetoric — rhetoric that, had it been uttered by, say, a white president, would’ve been grounds for impeachment.
And yet there was Waters on Saturday night, pouring gasoline on yet another fire. As the New York Post reports, “Waters joined hundreds of angry protesters who thronged Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, early Sunday, all breaking the 11 p.m. curfew together during the seventh night of protests against the police killing of Daunte Wright. ‘We’ve got to stay in the streets, and we’ve got to demand justice,’ she urged the crowd, according to one tweeted clip. ‘We’re looking for a guilty verdict’ in Derek Chauvin’s trial for the police killing of George Floyd, where deliberations will begin next week, she said. ‘And if we don’t, we cannot go away,’ she added. ‘We’ve got to get more confrontational.’”
“We’re looking for a guilty verdict,” and if we don’t get it, “We’ve got to get more confrontational”? Isn’t that a naked attempt to intimidate a jury?
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was quick to respond to the LA Loudmouth. “Maxine Waters is inciting violence in Minneapolis — just as she has incited it in the past,” he tweeted. “If Speaker Pelosi doesn’t act against this dangerous rhetoric, I will bring action this week.”
McCarthy, if he’s planning to bring action, had better giddy up. Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has a talent for picking the right enemies and was herself stripped of all committee assignments for far less than Waters’s offense, announced an effort Sunday to expel Waters from Congress. As Fox News reports, “In a statement released by her office, Taylor Greene accused the California Congresswoman of inciting ‘Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists to fire gunshots at National Guardsmen in Minnesota’ after she spoke in Brooklyn Center, which has become a flashpoint for protests following the fatal police shooting of Daunte Wright.”
Expulsion, you ask? Indeed. According to House Rule 23, clause 1: “A Member, Delegate, Resident Commissioner, officer, or employee of the House shall conduct himself at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House.”
If the question is whether Waters has conducted herself “at all times in a manner that shall reflect creditably on the House,” we’d say the case is open-and-shut.
“Telling rioters who have burned buildings, looted stores, and assaulted journalists to get ‘more confrontational’ is incredibly irresponsible,” National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Mike Berg told Fox News. “Every House Democrat should condemn Maxine Waters’s call for violence.”
So far, though, it’s crickets and tumbleweeds from the Democrat side of the aisle. And for good reason. Waters herself would be a damning witness in a case against her. As the New York Post editorial board opines, “In supporting the second impeachment of President Donald Trump … Waters said he was ‘inciting’ his followers, and was ‘trying to create a civil war.’ By her own standards, Maxine Waters should be impeached and removed.”
This, of course, isn’t Waters’s first attempt at rabble-rousing. On June 23, 2018, she infamously incited her followers to harass and intimidate members of Trump’s cabinet. “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up,” she told a 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!”
Class act, that Maxine Waters. But enough is enough. It’s time her colleagues stop falling back on the soft bigotry of low expectations and begin holding her to the same standard as everyone else.
Update: Asked to answer for the incitement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended Waters’s remarks and explained that it’s actually a virtue. “Maxine talked about confrontation in the manner of the Civil Rights movement. I myself think we should take our lead from the George Floyd family. They’ve handled this with great dignity and no ambiguity or lack of misinterpretation by the other side.”
The same woman who impeached Donald Trump for incitement added, “No, no, I don’t think she should apologize.”