WASHINGTON — Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said she canceled planned weekend speaking engagements in Texas and Alabama after receiving many threats capped off by “one very serious death threat.”
Last weekend after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was kicked out of a restaurant in Lexington, Va., Waters encouraged protester confrontations with Trump administration officials.
“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. 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,” Waters said at a rally in Los Angeles on Saturday.
“You tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” Waters added.
President Trump tweeted in response, “Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party. 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!”
That exchange prompted a week of calls for civility by members of Congress. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) “strongly” advocated Democrats not take Waters’ advice. “No one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That’s not right. That’s not American,” he said Monday.
Waters said in a statement Thursday that “as the president has continued to lie and falsely claim that I encouraged people to assault his supporters, while also offering a veiled threat that I should ‘be careful,’ even more individuals are leaving (threatening) messages and sending hostile mail to my office.”
“There was one very serious death threat made against me on Monday from an individual in Texas which is why my planned speaking engagements in Texas and Alabama were canceled this weekend,” the statement continued. “This is just one in several very serious threats the United States Capitol Police are investigating in which individuals threatened to shoot, lynch, or cause me serious bodily harm.”
Capitol Police do not comment on ongoing investigations.
In April, Anthony Scott Lloyd, 45, of San Pedro, Calif., pleaded guilty to threatening to threatening Waters, which could carry up to 10 years in prison when he’s sentenced July 16.
According to court documents, Lloyd had been listening to talk radio Oct. 22 and got upset when he heard a story about Waters making disparaging comments toward Trump.
He called the congresswoman’s Capitol Hill office and left a voicemail: “If you continue to make threats toward the president, you’re going to wind up dead, Maxine, ’cause we’ll kill you.” The message, which was read in court, also included the N-word and an anti-gay slur, according to the Daily Breeze.
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