If there's a competition for the most unhinged, unglued, wackadoodle conspiracy theorist in the United States House of Representatives, Maxine Waters has to be, if not in first place, then at least in the top three. And mind you, she's up against some pretty stiff competition. In the latest episode of "Maxine Waters Gone Wild," she took to MSNBC to decry the violence that will ensue if former President Trump wins reelection this November - not from the left, but from some shadowy right-wing groups up in the hills.
The interviewer neglected (as MSNBC interviewers are wont to do) to ask a couple of follow-up questions, like:
What right-wing groups? Who is in these groups? Who started them, and who is funding them?
What hills? Why are they in the hills? Where are these hills?
How do you know about these groups? Who told you about them? Have you seen them for yourself? What are they training to do?
You really just made all this up, didn't you?
Nobody at MSNBC will ask any of those questions, of course, because, well, it's MSNBC. Maxine Waters can do no wrong on that network; there is no one on the loony left who goes too far for MSNBC. That's their business model, and we can measure the success of that model by the fact that MSNBC has, literally, dozens of viewers.
Maxine Waters - who, by the way, has somehow amassed a personal fortune of over $10 million on her modest Congressional salary of $174,000 taxpayer dollars - has a history of not only loony conspiracy ravings but actually advocating for disruptive, violent "protests."
Here are examples:
In 2021, she called for protesters to openly confront law enforcement officers if Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was acquitted (he wasn't.)
Rep. Maxine Waters on Saturday night called for protesters to “stay on the street” and “get more confrontational” if former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is acquitted in the killing of George Floyd.
The comments by Waters, a California Democrat and icon among progressives, were immediately seized on by Republicans who claimed that Waters was inciting violence.
The House of Representatives, also in 2021, debated a censure resolution against Waters for those remarks, but the resolution was tabled on a largely party-line vote.
And in one of the most execrable political statements of the century so far, she encouraged her supporters - and it says a lot about how far we have sunk as a nation that someone as unhinged as Maxine Waters has any supporters - to confront Trump administration officials and, presumably, their families, while they are just going about their daily lives.
“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up,” Waters told a crowd in California over the weekend. “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 anymore, anywhere.”
This is beyond the pale, no matter the party of the speaker, and it would be just as objectionable if a Republican said it - that's how principles work, as opposed to politics, which are all about The Side. That's the thing about principles; they apply to everyone, equally. Politics don't work that way.
Normally I would say that the voters of California's 43rd Congressional District are entitled to the representation they voted for, even if that representative is a multi-millionaire who advocates for aggressive confrontation of political figures who are just trying to eat dinner. But I would argue that Maxine Waters' behavior is beyond what can be accepted by the House of Representatives. She has openly called for confrontations that could easily escalate to violence; she peddles wackadoodle conspiracy theories and is stoking unreasoned fear among her constituents with rants about "right-wing organizations" that are "training up in the hills somewhere." There is nothing about this kind of unhinged ranting that will end well; Maxine Waters would be quick to denounce anyone else for hate speech while feeling free to indulge in it herself.
As we have seen, her district voters will keep sending Maxine Waters back to Congress until the final Trump (hah). But Congress doesn't have to put up with her. In an honest, just world, she would be censured and expelled from the House.
But then, we no longer live in an honest and just world.