Political feud escalates amid Trump insults
WASHINGTON » President Donald Trump on Monday escalated a feud with a veteran Democratic lawmaker who called for aggressive protests of administration officials, warning Rep. Maxine Waters of California to “Be careful what you wish for Max!,” even as leaders in both parties cautioned against increasingly caustic political rhetoric.
Trump’s message, conveyed on Twitter, stood in sharp contrast to a call for civility by White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, whose ouster from a Virginia restaurant sparked a furious debate over whether opponents should take out their political frustrations against administration officials in their private lives.
The tensions have flared as part of an acrimonious debate over immigration and the separation of migrant families at the U.S.-Mexico border, which has prompted some protesters to hound Republican officials outside their homes, in restaurants and at movie theaters. Sanders was asked to leave the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia, on Friday night because the owner said she believes Sanders works for an “inhumane and unethical” administration.
In recent days, Democratic fears of a backlash have spilled into public view after Waters, a vocal Trump critic, told supporters at a Los Angeles rally Saturday that “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!” She repeated that call in an MSNBC interview later the same day.
In a rare rebuke of a fellow Democrat, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, DCalif., pushed back Monday against Waters’ comments.
“In the crucial months ahead, we must strive to make America beautiful again,” Pelosi wrote in a tweet. “Trump’s daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are predictable but unacceptable. As we go forward, we must conduct elections in a way that achieves unity from sea to shining sea.”
Some Democrats worry that the remarks by Waters, coupled with the ejection of Sanders, are an unneeded distraction at a time of swelling public anger over reports of desperate children being separated from their parents because of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy.
On Monday afternoon, Trump responded to Waters with insults. In a tweet, Trump called Waters “an extraordinarily low IQ person” who, together with Pelosi, had become “the Face of the Democrat Party.” He also appeared to issue a veiled threat to Waters herself.
“She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement,” Trump wrote. “Be careful what you wish for Max!”
A Waters spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
Later, at Monday’s White House press briefing, Sanders referred to the Red Hen incident and said that all Americans should be allowed to disagree “freely and without fear of harm.”