June 25, 2018

Trump Launches Veiled Threat Against Congresswoman: “Be Careful What You Wish For”

The president also accused Rep. Maxine Waters of having an “extremely low IQ.”

Brian Cahn/ZUMA

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President Donald Trump on Monday falsely accused Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) of attempting to incite violence against his supporters, warning the California lawmaker to “be careful what you wish for.” He also viciously branded Waters as being an “extremely low IQ person.”

The president’s tweet is a blatant misrepresentation of Waters’ actual comments, in which she recently urged Democrats to confront Trump administration officials in public with words of protest, not violence. “Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up,” Waters said at a rally in Los Angeles Saturday. “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.”

“Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” she said, before speaking out against Trump’s immigration policy separating migrant children from their parents.

Conservatives instantly seized on the remarks, which came amid a recent spate of public protests against Trump officials inside privately owned restaurants. The latest involved White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Saturday, when the owner of a Lexington, Virginia, restaurant asked her to leave over the Trump administration’s “inhumane” policies.

Adding to the misrepresentations Monday, Trump also appeared to accuse House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of supporting Waters’ remarks moments after Pelosi did exactly the opposite.

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THE BIG PICTURE

You expect the big picture, and it's our job at Mother Jones to give it to you. And right now, so many of the troubles we face are the making not of a virus, but of the quest for profit, political or economic (and not just from the man in the White House who could have offered leadership and comfort but instead gave us bleach).

In "News Is Just Like Waste Management," we unpack what the coronavirus crisis has meant for journalism, including Mother Jones’, and how we can rise to the challenge. If you're able to, this is a critical moment to support our nonprofit journalism with a donation: We've scoured our budget and made the cuts we can without impairing our mission, and we hope to raise $400,000 from our community of online readers to help keep our big reporting projects going because this extraordinary pandemic-plus-election year is no time to pull back.

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