OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
President Joe Biden managed to once again turn heads with remarks he made at an event in Los Angeles involving one of Congress’ most controversial members, Rep. Maxine Waters.
At one point during the event, Biden exclaimed that he agreed with everything the long-serving California Democrat says, saying: “…Whatever Maxine Says, I agree with.”
WATCH
Biden: “Maxine Waters! Whatever Maxine says, I agree with.” pic.twitter.com/Hi3INrtWhg
— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) October 13, 2022
Without question, Waters is one of the most combative and bombastic lawmakers in Congress, as several past examples demonstrate. For example, in 2018 during a campaign event in her home state, Waters infamously called on Americans to confront members of then-President Donald Trump’s administration in public, with critics suggesting that she called for violence against them.
“And if you see anybody from [Trump’s] 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,” she told a crowd.
In April 2021, she went to Minneapolis, Minn., ahead of a jury’s verdict in the case of former police officer Derek Chauvin, who was eventually convicted of murdering George Floyd, and was accused of inciting a crowd to violence. “We’ve got to stay on the street and we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business,” she said during a pre-verdict protest.
In September 2021, she helped spread the ultimately false narrative that mounted U.S. Border Patrol agents “whipped” Haitian migrants with their reins, comparing the alleged incident to slavery.
“We’re saying to the president and everybody else, you’ve got to stop this madness. And I want to know, in the first place, who’s paying these cowboys to do this work?” she said. “They have got to be gotten rid of. They’ve got to be stopped. It cannot go on. What we witnessed was worse than what we witnessed in slavery.”
"I’m unhappy, and I'm not just unhappy with the cowboys who were running down Haitians and using their reins to whip them. I'm unhappy with this administration," Rep. Maxine Waters says at a news conference on the situation at the U.S. southern border. https://t.co/tUeqoESHTP pic.twitter.com/BuWTMs8ilf
— ABC News (@ABC) September 22, 2021
And in June of this year, she urged Americans to “defy” the U.S. Supreme Court after justices overturned the Roe v. Wade decision from 1973, sending the issue back to the states.
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Women are going to control their bodies, no matter how they try and stop us,” Waters said. “The hell with the Supreme Court, we will defy them. Women will be in control of their bodies!”
Maxine Waters and Al Green among members of Congress who’ve shown up outside the Supreme Court to denounce the end of Roe. “Women are going to control their bodies, no matter how they try and stop us,” Waters says. “The hell with the Supreme Court, we will defy them.” pic.twitter.com/SCkicoQj68
— Alejandro Alvarez (@aletweetsnews) June 24, 2022
“And if they think black women are intimidated or oppressed, they’ve got another thought coming. Black women will be out in droves. We will be out by the thousands. We will be out by the millions,” she added. “We’re going to make sure we fight for the right to control our own bodies.”
Waters has also been criticized for political patronage, funneling more than $1.2 million over the last decade to her daughter for various ‘campaign services,’ though no one has suggested or demonstrated that the transactions were violations of the law.
Nevertheless, Republicans have moved to make such familial political patronage illegal. In June, GOP members introduced The Family Integrity to Reform Elections (FIRE) Act, which would bar any candidate running for federal office from compensating immediate family members for campaign services.
It is currently legal for lawmakers to employ family members to work on campaigns. However, Federal Election Commission regulations prohibit paying candidate relatives a salary unless they are ‘providing bona fide services to the campaign’ and the salary represents ‘fair market value of the services provided,'” the New York Post reported at the time.
“The legislation – first reviewed by The Post – would extend the ban to any political committee ‘established, maintained or controlled by a candidate or an individual holding Federal office’ – blocking any current lawmaker from compensating a family member for working on their campaign,” the report added.
