Maxine Waters: Do NOT Let the Trump Team Eat in Peace!
PoliticsAccording to the Hill, at the rally Waters seemingly addressed a number of recent incidents in which Trump administration officials were ejected from restaurants—including one in which DHS Secretary Kristjen Nielsen was shouted out of a Mexican restaurant by a group of protestors, and another in which a Virginia restauranteur refused to serve Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on “moral grounds.” Though some elected officials, including Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, have deemed the public protest of Trump officials “not appropriate,” Waters couldn’t give a shit about civility, particularly in light of the havoc wreaked on migrant families thanks to Trump’s zero tolerance immigration policy:
I have no sympathy for these people that are in this administration who know it is wrong what they’re doing on so many fronts but they tend to not want to confront this president. For these members of his cabinet who remain and try to defend him they’re not going to be able to go to a restaurant, they’re not going to be able to stop at a gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop at a department store, the people are going to turn on them, they’re going to protest, they’re going to absolutely harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the president ‘no I can’t hang with you, this is wrong this is unconscionable and we can’t keep doing this to children.
Meghan McCain got mad.
Waters’s call for relentless protest preceded a fun missive from the Washington Post’s editorial board, titled, “Let the Trump team eat in peace.” Though the board called out Trump’s human rights-violating border policies, they also claimed recent attempts to shout down Team Trump were not “a healthy development,” deeming it a Pandora’s box of sorts:
We nonetheless would argue that Ms. Huckabee, and Ms. Nielsen and Mr. Miller, too, should be allowed to eat dinner in peace. Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?
Never mind that abortion rights protectors and patients alike have long been subject to both relentless protest and more harrowing forms of harassment, and often without the support of loudmouth internet conservatives with big Twitter followings. In a country as divided as this one, it does seem like giving everyone, including people you don’t agree with, carte blanche to scream nonstop at their enemies could backfire hard. Then again, folks who signed up for the most outwardly (emphasis on outwardly) bigoted administration in the history of the modern United States made a choice, and they chose poorly. Trump’s made no secret of who he is (a racist charlatan reality TV star) or what he stands for (money, for himself), and his administration’s gotten right in line to do his bidding. They know what they’re doing, and who they’re hurting, and they don’t care.
Plus, no one should have to see Stephen Miller’s pinched thumbface in public ever again. #TeamMaxine.