Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has faced mounting backlash this week after her comments encouraging folks to confront and shame members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet in public. Now, a Republican lawmaker is calling for her resignation.
Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona introduced a motion Monday to censure Waters, an outspoken critic of the Trump administration and, more recently, its contested “zero tolerance” policy separating migrant families at the border. According to The Hill, Biggs’ motion also calls on the congresswoman to apologize to administration officials for “… endangering their lives and sowing seeds of discord,” step down from her post and issue a statement saying that harassment, nor violence are appropriate forms of protest.
The motion comes just days after Waters’ comments at a rally in Los Angeles over the weekend, during which she called on the public to harass Trump administration officials. Her “call to action” has since drawn criticism from both sides of the aisle.
“If you think we’re rallying now you ain’t seen nothing yet,” she said to the cheering crowd. ” … If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gas 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.”
The California Democrat’s remarks do “not become somebody who’s in Congress,” Biggs told The Hill, arguing that disciplinary action was necessary.
“So we just introduced it, we have some co-sponsors, but what she did was to basically incite people to come after and attack members of the president’s cabinet,” he continued. “And also spread that out to more people.”
So far, the motion already has attracted support from five members of Congress.
Waters clarified her comments at a press conference Monday afternoon, insisting she never called for the public to harm Trump Cabinet members. She then turned her focus to the president, noting the many times he advocated for violence against protesters at his campaign rallies.
“Trump is the one who is creating lies,” she argued. “…Trying to have people believe that I talked about harming people. There’s nowhere in my statement, anytime, anyplace that we talked about harm.”
Waters went on to encourage peaceful protest, saying, “I have nothing to do with the way people decide to protest. Protest is the democratic way as long as it is peaceful. I believe in peaceful protest. It is guaranteed to you in a democracy.”
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