Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) has been the most vocal lawmaker on Capitol Hill, calling for President Donald Trump’s impeachment since the first day of his term, but that’s apparently news to her.
Waters went on MSNBC Tuesday afternoon and told network host Craig Melvin that she had never called for Trump’s impeachment — demonstrably false claim she made just hours posting a tweet calling for the president to be impeached.
Melvin read the tweet aloud to the California lawmaker and then asked her what offenses Trump has committed that — in her view — should lead to impeachment proceedings.
Waters raised concerns about potential Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, citing hacking into the internal emails of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and suggested that Trump’s associates may have been colluding with Russian officials to swing the election in his favor.
“The question becomes was there colluding? Did this campaign — did this president and his campaign and/or allies — collude with the Russians in doing the hacking and undermining our democracy?” she asked. “[W]e have enough information that leads us to, I think, a credible investigation to find out whether or not there was collusion, and whether or not an oil deal is involved in all of this.”
At that, Melvin interjected, asking Waters if lawmakers should wait for all the facts to come out before suggesting Trump has committed impeachable offenses.
“I have not called for impeachment,” Waters quickly shot back.
The MSNBC host, looking somewhat amused at Waters clearly untrue comment, repeated the Democrat’s Tuesday morning tweet, which he read at the start of the interview.
“You said, ‘I’m going to fight every day until he’s impeached!’ That’s what you tweeted,” Melvin said.
Waters then tried to offer some sort of caveat to her numerous calls for Trump’s impeachment.
“Yeah, but here’s what I’ve said,” she responded. “I’ve said that we need the information. We need to connect the dots. We need the facts in order to do the impeachment, and I’m going to work every day to try and help get those facts and to reveal them to the republic — to our public — until, of course, impeachment [has] taken place.”
Last week, Waters told the Los Angeles Press Club,“I want this president impeached.” In March, she told Elle magazine that she’s “out to get” Trump.
And even more recently, she led anti-Trump protesters at a Tax March rally in Washington, D.C., on Saturday in a chant calling for the president’s impeachment.
“I don’t respect this president,” Waters said over the weekend. “I don’t trust this president. He’s not working in the best interests of the American people. His motives and his actions are contemptible.
“I will fight every day until he is impeached,” she continued. “Impeach 45! Impeach 45! Impeach 45!”
