Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters has taken criticism in recent days because she joined protests over the police shooting of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, and called for protesters to “stay in the streets” and “get more confrontational” if they felt that justice was not being served.
Following her comments, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy accused Waters directly of “inciting violence,” promising to take action if House Speaker Nancy Pelosi failed to do so.
Maxine Waters is inciting violence in Minneapolis — just as she has incited it in the past. If Speaker Pelosi doesn’t act against this dangerous rhetoric, I will bring action this week.
— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) April 19, 2021
It was only a few months ago, however, that Waters said former President Donald Trump should be charged with premeditated murder in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. She added that the former president was “capable” of starting a “civil war.”
Furthermore, a few days after the Capital riot, Waters blamed former President Trump for causing the violence that took place and suggested that pitting Americans against each other was part of his strategy. She claimed that he planned to “exercise power long after he is out of office, she argued that he must be impeached a second time because “he is capable of starting a civil war.”
A couple of weeks later, she spoke with MSNBC’s Joy Reid and claimed that Trump had known in advance that people were planning to breach the Capitol — and that he had “absolutely initiated it.”
Waters said that Trump should be charged with “murder.”
“As a matter of fact, he absolutely should be charged with premeditated murder because of the lives that were lost with this invasion, with this insurrection,” she said. (RELATED: ‘Get More Active’: Maxine Waters Calls On Daunte Wright Protesters To Show The World That They ‘Mean Business’)
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Waters accused Trump of having advanced knowledge of the “invasion” and also claimed that “some of the planning came out of individuals working in this campaign.”
“And so yes, we are threatened, but we can’t back up … For the President of the United States to sit and watch the invasion and the insurrection and not say a word because he knew that he had absolutely initiated it … When he rallied, he said go to the Capitol, fight hard. This is take back your country. And so if that’s not inciting the kind of violence that we witnessed, I don’t know what is.”
On the other hand, Waters had previously encouraged supporters to confront members of former President Trump’s cabinet in public places and show them “they’re not welcome.”
“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,” Waters said in 2018.
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