As Los Angeles rioters engaged in violence against law enforcement, while others blocked traffic or burned cars, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., focused her attention on taunting the deployed National Guard troops in the city.
“What are you all going to do? Are you going to shoot some kids?” Waters, 86, who has represented part of Los Angeles in Congress since 1991, shouted at the troops in a video widely circulated on social media.
“Are you going to shoot an elected official?” the firebrand Democrat asked. “If you shoot me, you better shoot straight.”
She also said state and city officials “should be on the streets” in Los Angeles to protest President Donald Trump and the detention of illegal aliens by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said protests against enforcement actions by ICE turned violent and resulted in 27 people being arrested on charges that included throwing Molotov cocktails and rocks, and shooting fireworks at police officers. Some also set a self-driving car on fire.
Waters, a longtime critic of Trump, directed her ire at the National Guard troops that Trump deployed.
“I don’t know why you are in my city. The governor was not contacted,” Waters shouted. “This is Trump and his outrageous attempt to not only target our sanctuary city, but to frighten us and intimidate us.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, objected to Trump sending National Guard troops to the state without consulting him.
Waters urged the guard troops to defy Trump.
“This is wrong, and I hope that none of you will use those guns to shoot anybody. There is no reason to shoot anybody,” Waters shouted. “Don’t allow them to make your service a service where you are killing people. Don’t do it. Defy them. Don’t shoot those guns.”
After shouting at the troops, she spoke to reporters, saying, “I’m sure they have orders to shoot and kill.”
“My message to Donald Trump is that you are a cruel human being, abusing the poorest people in the land, the most vulnerable people in the land to promote your policy,” the congresswoman said in the press gaggle.
Waters said illegal immigrants should be “given consideration for citizenship.”
“They should be given the opportunity to tell their story, who they are, and why they are here and ask the United States to please do what the Constitution allows us to do, and that is, give them consideration for having citizenship here,” she said.
The longtime lawmaker also said that all elected officials in Los Angeles and California should be in Los Angeles in solidarity with the anti-ICE protests.
“All of the elected officials in this city should be on the street, the mayor should be on the street, the City Council should be on the street. Everybody should be on the street,” Waters said. “All of the state elected officials should be on the streets. All of us in Congress”
