Episode Details
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April 22, 2021
Published 5 years, 5 months ago
Description
- When the process breaks down, business suffers.
- When elected officials are inciting a riot, where's the accountability?
- When did a member of Congress become Judge Roy Bean?
- Maxine on the Rodney King Watts riots
- "If you call it a riot it sounds like it was just a bunch of crazy people who went out and did bad things for no reason. I maintain it was somewhat understandable, if not acceptable." In her view, the violence was "a spontaneous reaction to a lot of injustice." In regard to the looting of Korean-owned stores by local black residents, she said in an interview with KABC "There were mothers who took this as an opportunity to take some milk, to take some bread, to take some shoes... They are not crooks."
- The Los Angeles Times reported in 2004, Maxine Waters' relatives had made more than $1 million during the preceding eight years by doing business with companies, candidates, and causes that Waters had helped. They claimed she and her husband helped a company get a government bond business, and her daughter Karen Waters and son Edward Waters have profited from her connections. Waters replied that "They do their business and I do mine."
- Waters came under investigation for ethics violations and was accused by a House panel of at least one ethics violation related to her efforts to help OneUnited Bank receive federal aid. Waters' husband is a stockholder and former director of OneUnited Bank and the bank's executives were major contributors to her campaigns. In September 2008, Waters arranged meetings between U.S. Treasury Department officials and OneUnited Bank, so that the bank could plead for federal cash. It had been heavily invested in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, and its capital was "all but wiped out" after the U.S. government took them over. The bank received $12 million in Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) money. The matter was investigated by the House Ethics Committee,[51][52] which charged her with violations of the House's ethics rules in 2010. On September 21, 2012, the House Ethics Committee completed a report clearing Waters of all ethics charges after nearly three years of investigation. As usual, the House takes care of its members.
- Waters objected to the 3 electoral votes from Wyoming after the 2016 presidential election, a state Donald Trump won with 68.2% of the vote. Because no senator joined her objection, the objection was dismissed by then-Vice President Joe Biden.
- On June 23, 2018, following an incident in which White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant, Waters urged attendees at a rally in Los Angeles to confront Trump administration officials in public places: "...tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere."
- The judge in the Chauvin/Floyd trial said that Walters' comments were "abhorrent" and that it was "disrespectful to the rule of law and to the judicial branch" for elected officials to comment in advance of the verdict. The judge refused the defense's request for a mistrial, saying that the jury "have been told not to watch the news. I trust they are following those instructions," but also said that "Congresswoman Waters may have given you something on appeal that may result in this whole trial being overturned".
- In 1998, Waters wrote an open letter to Fidel Castro asking him not to extradite convicted terrorist Assata Shakur from Cuba, where she had sought asylum. Waters argued that much of the Black community regarded her conviction as false.
- Waters has called Trump "a bully, an egotistical maniac, a liar and someone who did not need to be President" and "the most deplorable person I've ever met in my life".[99] In a 2017 appearance on MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes, Waters said President Donald Trump's advisors who have ties to Russia or have oil and gas interests there are "a bunch of scumbags."
- Waters began to call for the imp