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Rep. Maxine Waters Planned to Skip Inauguration Before Lewis-Trump Feud: ‘I Don’t Respect Him’

Posted byBy Ricky Riley | Published on: CommentsComments (0)

On the Jan. 17 edition of “MSNBC Live with Tamron Hall,” Rep. Maxine Waters of California said that President-elect Donald Trump’s recent feud with Rep. John Lewis had no bearing on her decision to skip Trump’s inauguration. She had long ago decided not to attend.

“Well, let me just tell you,” Waters begins. “After I discovered who Trump is and the way he has conducted himself, I was never going to go to the inauguration. I never planned, I never contemplated even going near any of those activities or those events.”

Waters pulled no punches in her condemnation of the president-elect. “The inauguration is a way of welcoming someone into the presidency, of honoring them,” she said. “I don’t honor him, I don’t respect him and I don’t want to be involved with him.”

Last week, Lewis told NBC News‘ Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” that he believed that Trump is an “illegitimate president” because reports from the intelligence community suggest that the Russians may have interfered with 2016 election in Trump’s favor.

The congresswoman has been a vocal critic of the president-elect throughout his 2016 presidential campaign and subsequent election. In recent months, Waters joined nearly 60 other members of Congress who plan to sit out the Jan. 20 inauguration. She told Hall that she doesn’t like the way Trump has lied and disparaged people in recent months and throughout his career. 

Despite the Lewis-Trump feud, Waters said she had already made up her mind about the president-elect. “I don’t like the way he has misled people, the way he has lied. … I don’t like the way he mimicked and mocked a disabled man. I don’t like the way he talked about women and grabbing their private parts.”

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