House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) on Tuesday accused Rep. Maxine Waters of calling for violence against her political opponents, even though Waters has rejected that assertion multiple times.
“There’s no place for this,” Ryan said, unprompted, at a press conference Tuesday. “She obviously should apologize. When we in this democracy are suggesting that because we disagree with people on political views, on policy views, on philosophical views, that we should resort to violence and harassment and intimidation, that’s dangerous for our society, it’s dangerous for our democracy.”
“She should apologize, and there’s just no place for that in our public discourse.”
Ryan also cited House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), who was shot and seriously injured at a congressional baseball practice last year. Without naming Waters specifically, Scalise had warned earlier Tuesday against “inciting harassment or violence of any sort just because we disagree with each other on issues.”
On Saturday, responding to news that White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders had been asked to leave a restaurant Friday night, Waters celebrated the move and called for more public shaming of members of the Trump administration.
“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,” Waters said at a “Keep Families Together” rally in Los Angeles, a protest of the Trump administration’s migrant family separation policy. “And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”
Trump later attacked Waters in a tweet, insulting her intelligence and saying: “She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max!”
Waters called that another lie from Trump, and later told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on Monday: “I would not in any way support any violence, anybody being hit or beaten, or then saying to them, ‘I’ll help to get you out of jail.’ This president is guilty of all of that.”
