California Congresswoman Maxine Waters is making it clear she has no interest in bringing the country together by working with President-elect Donald Trump.
Waters, a Los Angeles Democrat, told MSNBC’s Jacob Soboroff on Monday her party has been “too nice” and said she opposes plans by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats to work with the Trump administration.
“I do not agree,” she said. “And I tell you, that has been a problem in my party, that when we’re in power we’re nice. We bend over backwards to work with people.
“Trump has stepped on everybody. He has no respect for his own colleagues, let alone those on the opposite side of the aisle,” Waters complained. “He’s called names. He’s lied. He’s done everything to show he really doesn’t have good values, and he can’t be trusted.
“Why should we work with someone that we can’t trust. He’ll tell you one thing today and other thing tomorrow.”
Waters went on to lecture Trump supporters about the president-elect’s policies, then vowed to “fight him every inch of the way.”
“I have no intention of pretending everything is all right, that we’re going to work together,” she told Soboroff. “For me, as the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee, where he’s said he’s going to bring down Dodd-Frank, and he’s going to get rid of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, I’m going to fight him every inch of the way.”
And by “every inch of the way,” Waters means she’d flatly reject a White House invitation to find common ground.
“Oh no. I won’t go,” Waters said. “I’m not going to sit down with him. I’m not going to go. I’m not going to pretend. Enough pretending. This business of calling names, and lying, and retreating on your promises, etcetera, why should I trust him to be any different with me?”
Waters reiterated her title and said she’s “been working hard” to fix the 2,300 pages of complex Dodd-Frank financial regulations Trump wants to roll back.
“No, I don’t trust him. I don’t believe him. I have no intentions of sitting down with him. I’m going to fight him every inch of the way. And I am going to show the American people that they, too, cannot trust him.”
The American people trusted Trump when they elected him president in November, and at least some Democrats think it’s the elitist attitudes and “bicoastal” bias of the party’s leadership that contributed to his victory over Hillary Clinton.
Trump spoke to voters in Middle America hit hardest by the recession, while elitist ranking members in the Democratic Party like Waters and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi speak to high society, U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, an Ohio Democrat, told the Toledo Blade.
“I think that they are sympathetic but they really don’t understand,” Kaptur said. “They are captive of their own ideology and culture and economies.”
Leave a Comment
COMMENTS POLICY: We have no tolerance for messages of violence, racism, vulgarity, obscenity or other such discourteous behavior. Thank you for contributing to a respectful and useful online dialogue.