When President Donald Trump attends GOP rallies, he implements the sexist and racist rhetoric he used during his presidential campaign trail to rile up supporters. Trump mocked Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) during a speech at a rally for congressional hopeful Rick Saccone on Saturday night in Moon Township, Pa.
He brought into question the intellect of Waters, a Black female politician.
“And Maxine Waters, a very low IQ individual. Did you ever see her?” Trump said.
Trump went on to stir up the audience in a township that is 86 percent white and 4 percent Black. He talked about Waters’ call for him to be impeached.
“‘We will impeach him. We will impeach the president. But he hasn’t done anything wrong. It doesn’t matter, we will impeach him.’ She’s a low IQ individual. She can’t help it. She really is. ‘We will impeach him.’ But we have Maxine Waters and plenty of others,” he continued.
This isn’t the first time Trump has insulted Waters’ intelligence. During the annual Gridiron Club dinner on March 3, Trump said of the congresswoman, “She has to immediately take an IQ test.”
Waters, elected in November 2014 to her 13th term in the U.S. House of Representatives, serves as the ranking member of the House Committee on Financial Services. The congresswoman, using her intelligence, defeated the odds and earned her current position.
She was born in St. Louis, Mo., the fifth of 13 children reared by a single mother. Waters began working at age 13 in factories and segregated restaurants. After moving to Los Angeles, she worked in garment factories and at the telephone company.
Waters then attended California State University at Los Angeles, where she earned a bachelor’s degree. Before her election to Congress, she was a leader in the movement to end Apartheid and establish democracy in South Africa.
As a national Democratic Party leader, Waters has served on the Democratic National Committee (DNC) since 1980. She was a key leader in five presidential campaigns: Sen. Edward Kennedy (1980), Rev. Jesse Jackson (1984 and 1988), and President Bill Clinton (1992 and 1996). In 2001, she was instrumental in the DNC’s creation of the National Development and Voting Rights Institute and the appointment of Mayor Maynard Jackson as its chair.
Meanwhile, Trump brags about graduating from Wharton, The University of Pennsylvania’s School of Business. Yet, he used family connections to gain admission. Trump transferred from Fordham University to Penn in his junior year, so he only spent two years at the school. He never made the dean’s list.
“Trump did not go to Wharton’s prestigious MBA program,” according to Salon.com. “Rather, he received an undergraduate degree offered by Wharton to University of Pennsylvania students.”
In Trump’s lengthy speech on Saturday, he also made reference to media mogul Oprah Winfrey. Although Winfrey last month put to rest any lingering questions about a potential 2020 bid for the presidency by declaring on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” that she was “definitely not running,” Trump said he’d like to beat her in a presidential race.
“I’d love Oprah to win,” Trump said, seemingly referring to winning the Democratic nomination for president.
“I’d love to beat Oprah. I know her weakness.”
In a tweet last month, Trump called her “very insecure.”
‘He is an expert at name-calling’
Waters fired back at Trump on Sunday in a telephone interview with MSNBC’s Joy-Ann Reid.
“This is typical of him,” Waters said. “He is an expert at name-calling. I understand that in addition to continuing his name-calling … that he continued to attack Elizabeth Warren and Nancy Pelosi, made some reference to Oprah Winfrey … and it seems that he’s identifying and picking up more women that he’s attacking.
“Again, I expected this, though. This is not only typical of him; this is what this con man does. He diverts attention from himself by attacking others, but this business about Stormy [Daniels] is not going to go away,” Waters said, referring to Trump’s alleged affair with the adult-film star.
“He can call us all the names that he wants to call us, but you know our special counsel, [Robert] Mueller, is connecting the dots, and last night in a speech I said that if for some reason Mueller does not get him, Stormy will,” she said.
“We know that this is going to go on, and I’m not going to run from it. I’m not intimidated by him. And so he can keep calling names. I’ve got plenty for him.”
Waters has been outspoken about her belief that Trump is unfit for the presidency. In her rebuttal last month to Trump’s State of the Union address, she said his TV appearances should be censored for children.
“This president with his vulgarity and his disrespect for women and people of color is a terrible role model for our children,” Waters said in a taped response that aired on BET’s “Angela Rye’s State of the Union.” “Whenever he appears on TV, there should be a disclaimer that says, ‘This may not be acceptable for children.’”
For her criticism of Trump, Waters has received death threats. In November, a federal grand jury charged Anthony Scott Lloyd of San Pedro, Calif., with threatening to murder Waters in a phone call to her Capitol Hill office.
Using the n-word to refer to the congresswoman, he said she would “wind up dead” for voicing her objections to Trump.
