House Financial Services Chair Maxine Waters (D-CA) on Monday swatted away House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and other Republicans’ freakout over her remarks urging people to get “confrontational” in the movement against police killings of Black Americans.
In an interview with the Grio, Waters pushed back against her GOP colleagues’ accusations that she was trying to incite violence on Saturday at a protest against the killing of Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota.
“I talk about confronting the justice system, confronting the policing that’s going on, I’m talking about speaking up,” the Democrat said. “I’m talking about legislation. I’m talking about elected officials doing what needs to be done to control their budgets and to pass legislation.”
Waters slammed the Republicans’ spin on her comment, saying they “will jump on any word” to “try to make it fit their message” that Democrats endorse violence in the movement against police brutality.
“I am not worried that they’re going to continue to distort what I say,” the congresswoman told the Grio. “This is who they are and this is how they act. And I’m not going to be bullied by them.”
On Sunday, McCarthy threatened to “bring action” against Waters for “inciting violence” at the protest on Saturday, despite the fact that that demonstration was not violent. Several rank-and-file Republican lawmakers backed McCarthy’s threat, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who lost her own committee assignments for posting violent rhetoric against Democrats online, has sworn to get her expelled.
Those Republicans openly supported ex-President Donald Trump’s attacks on the 2020 election results, which eventually led a mob of Trump supporters to lay siege to the Capitol on January 6. Since then, the GOP has refused to hold Trump or themselves accountable for the insurrection, throwing the sincerity of their concern over Waters’ comment into question.
