House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy demanded House Speaker Nancy Pelosi take action against Rep. Maxine Waters for inciting violence, promising to take action himself if Pelosi doesn’t act.
From the Daily Wire:
“Maxine Waters is inciting violence in Minneapolis — just as she has incited it in the past,” McCarthy said in a statement. “If Speaker Pelosi doesn’t act against this dangerous rhetoric, I will bring action this week.”
McCarthy’s remarks come after Waters attended a protest on Saturday night in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, where police shot and killed a man last week after he tried to flee while being arrested. Waters’ remarks also come just days before a verdict will be reached in the Derek Chauvin case involving the death of George Floyd.
“We’re looking for a guilty verdict. We’re looking for a guilty verdict. And we’re looking to see if all of this [inaudible] that took place and has been taking place after they saw what happened to George Floyd,” Waters said. “If nothing does not happen, then we know, that we’ve got to not only stay in the street, but we’ve got to fight for justice, but I am very hopefully and I hope that we’re going to get a verdict that will say guilty, guilty, guilty. And if we don’t, we cannot go away.”
When asked about what activists should do if Chauvin is not convicted, Waters said that they must “stay on the street.”
“And we’ve got to get more active. [We’ve] got to get more confrontational,” she said. “[We’ve] got to make sure that they know we mean business.”
McCarthy wasn’t the only person critical of the lawmaker’s comments, with the New York Post Editorial Board urging Pelosi to strip Waters of her committee assignment and removed from office.
The lawmaker’s comments were also condemned by Sen. Ted Cruz, who accused the Democrat of “actively encouraging riots & violence.”
Perhaps unsurprisingly, a guest on CNN sprang to the defense of Waters.
“I actually just listened to Maxine Waters. We all have to be cognizant of what we say. I don’t think what she said in anyway should, we should criticize her for. Of course, we should be more confrontational. That doesn’t mean we should be more violent,” Matthew Dowd said during the appearance. “But I was thinking about this as I was listening, is Emmett Till was killed in 1955, an all-white jury found the people that did it innocent. Then Medgar Evers, Jimmie Lee Jackson, so many of these folks that were guilty of killings and civil rights were then let off,” Dowd continued.” And the only thing that led to the civil rights legislation to finally pass in 1965 was you know non-violent protests and so I think that’s where we’re going to end up today. The Republicans seem to me on the complete wrong side of history on this.”
