LOS ANGELES (CNS) - Residents in Congresswoman Maxine Waters' South Los Angeles district will have a chance to sound off on the recent controversy surrounding the escalating war of words between the Democratic lawmaker and the Trump administration this morning in a town-hall program that will be broadcast on the radio and live-streamed online.
Waters is expected to call in to the program as well, which will air at 9 a.m. today on KPFK 90.7 FM and be streamed globally via kpfk.org.
“Congresswoman Maxine Waters, my congresswoman for many years, has received death threats and continued personal attacks, and a demand for an apology and resignation for remarks in a speech on confronting Trump officials,” Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President and program host Earl Ofari Hutchinson said Friday. “The on-air town hall will hear from Los Angeles residents and stakeholders and her constituents on the demands for a Waters apology and resignation.”
Waters canceled two weekend events in Texas and Alabama after receiving death threats, her office told CNN.
“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,” she said in the statement released Thursday.
“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,” she 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.”
Last weekend, the Los Angeles Democrat urged people opposed to the administration's policies to confront cabinet members. At a rally at the Westwood Federal Building, she alluded to the heckling of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who was dining at a Mexican restaurant in Washington, D.C. when she was confronted by protesters over family separations at the border, and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders being asked to leave a Lexington, Virginia, restaurant by its owner because of her work defending Trump and his policies.
“Let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up,” she said in remarks posted on YouTube. “And 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. And you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere.
“We've got to get the children connected to their parents,” the congresswoman said then. “Mr. President, we will see you every day, every hour of the day, everywhere that we are to let you know you cannot get away with this."
Waters appeared on a cable network later that day to reiterate her remarks, and exclaimed “no sympathy" for members of the Trump administration.
The president then sent a tweet that said: “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!”
Waters later said peaceful demonstrations are a cornerstone of democracy and she supports the right to protest.
“I have nothing to do with the way people decide to protest,” she said. “Protest is the democratic way, as long as it is peaceful.”
Waters added: “I don't cry about protests. People protest me all the time, people come to my district office all the time. Protest is the American way.”
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