President Trump foe Maxine Waters apparently thinks or thought that Russian President Vladimir Putin has invaded Korea.
The impeachment-minded California congresswoman made that statement at a Capitol Hill press conference (see video embedded below) in which she also insisted that she hasn’t called for President Trump’s impeachment yet .
Waters was one of the Democrat lawmakers who boycotted President Trump’s inauguration , declaring at the time that she neither honors nor respects the former New York real estate mogul, the Washington Free Beacon reported . A former Democrat and independent, Trump ran for president on the Republican ticket.
At the same event yesterday, another longtime Democrat politician, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, also seemed flustered when she referred to Trump as “President Bush.”
First elected to Congress in 1991, Waters represents a Los Angeles-area district. Pelosi, the one-time House Speaker when Democrats controlled the chamber from 2007 to 2011, has represented a San Francisco-area district for 30 years. Both are big fans of Hillary Clinton.
In the video, Rep. Waters denied previously calling for President Trump’s impeachment. Instead, she claimed to reporters that many people across the country have contacted her to express opposition to the Trump agenda and that the president is supposedly self-directing himself into impeachment, The American Mirror explained .
“How can a president who is acting the manner he is acting — whether he’s talking about the travel ban, the way he’s targeted Muslims, or whether he’s talking about his relationship to Putin and the Kremlin and knowing that they have hacked our [Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee] and the [Democratic National Committee]. And knowing that he’s responsible for supplying the bombs that killed innocent children and families in, um, in, um…yeah in Aleppo. And the fact that he is wrapping his arms around Putin while Putin is continuing to advance into Korea. I think that he is leading himself into that position…”
Libertarian presidential candidate Gary Johnson famously also encountered difficulties trying to remember Aleppo during the campaign.
President Trump has been on the receiving end of much criticism for failing to denounce Putin’s alleged interference in the election through email hacking, domestic human rights violations, and Russia’s intervention in the Syrian civil war.
The president told Bill O’Reilly on Super Bowl Sunday that he respects Putin but is unsure if he will be able to get along with him.
Trump evidently needs Putin’s support in the fight against ISIS, so that may partially explain his desire to develop, or try to develop, good diplomatic relations with the Kremlin. Parenthetically, given what has transpired in the past six months or so, it seems ironic that President Obama and others on his team ridiculed 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney for warning of the threat posed by Putin and Russia.
Getting back to the Maxine Waters’ press conference, Pelosi seemed more cautious, telling reporters that she wasn’t there to talk about impeachment. She did, however, bash Trump for a strategy that in her view is incoherent, incompetent, and reckless. None of that is grounds for impeachment unless and until the POTUS breaks the law, Pelosi conceded.
Rep. Waters probably meant Crimea (the Ukrainian territory Putin controversially annexed in 2014) rather than Korea. “In her desire to see President Donald Trump impeached, Rep. Maxine Waters confused the Eastern European region of Crimea with one of America’s greatest allies in Asia, Korea…If Waters want to make a convincing argument about geopolitics, she should consider brushing up on her geography,” HeatStreet noted .
As alluded to above, Waters colleague Pelosi also got her signals crossed when she confused Trump with Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush. This came as the congresswoman made a blanket statement that there was no common ground possible in terms of legislation.
“We’ve seen nothing that we can work, that I can work with President Bush on, and I’m disappointed, because I thought that there might be some interest because of what he said in the campaign…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2czvd61mR0
Like him or hate him, Trump ran for president on a series of specific campaign promises that he began to implement immediately after taking office.
HotAir theorized that Waters and Pelosi were engaged in a form of good cop-bad cop political theater about the I word, in which Pelosi allowed Waters to throw “red meat” to the anti-Trump cohort but avoided endorsing the idea herself.
Maxine Waters subsequently issued a tweet with the Korea/Crimea correction.
During a presser earlier today, I was referencing @realDonaldTrump ‘s relatively soft position on Putin’s actions in Crimea, not Korea.
— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) February 6, 2017
“A White House official called Waters comments an example of ‘extreme rhetoric from a completely out-of-touch party,’” CNN reported about the Trump impeachment talk.
Added: Maxine Waters now seems more receptive to a Trump impeachment.
[Featured Image by Lauren Victoria Burke/AP Images]