Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has received increased death threats after she called for protestors to publicly question Trump officials. But this week, the congresswoman said she received “several very serious threats” leading to event cancellations.
Amid the backlash against Waters, the Democrats’ top two leaders in Congress, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, actually threw her under the bus.
The two publicly reprimanded her without specifically calling her out by name. Schumer denounced calls to confront Trump officials as “not American,” while Pelosi said in a tweet that it was “understandable but unacceptable.”
Now death threats against Waters, currently serving her 13th term in the U.S. House of Representatives, are escalating.
At a rally last Saturday,
Waters said that those who oppose Trump’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy should question his Cabinet members wherever they encounter them.
“If you see anybody in 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,” she said. “And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere. We’ve got to get the children connected to their parents. The children are suffering.”
In a tweet on Monday, Trump said Waters called for harm to his supporters; said, again, that she has a low IQ; and warned her to “be careful.”
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
On Monday, Waters said she received a death threat so harsh she had to cancel events.
“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,” Waters said in a statement.
“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.”
Lynching occurred in the Jim Crow era where Black men, women and children were hanged by whites. So for a Trump supporter to name that practice in a threat to Waters speaks volumes.
During a private caucus meeting Tuesday morning, according to lawmakers in the room, Waters said she has a right to express herself under the First Amendment and that she does not support or condone violence, The Hill reports.
“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,” Waters said.
