The Trump era has provided a perfect environment for Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters to reinvent herself.
Rep. Maxine Waters has been reborn at the age of 78, emerging as a folk hero to the anti-Trump resistance for her repeated torching of the president.
From the glowing coverage and partisan praise, you’d barely detect that just a few years ago the veteran California congresswoman was dubbed one of the nation’s “most corrupt” elected officials by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington for her role in pushing a bailout for a bank tied to her family.
Waters was eventually cleared by investigators, though her grandson who served as her chief of staff was not. And now, Democrats seem to be embracing—and some liberal ethics advocates willfully ignoring—her sudden emergence as one of the nation’s leading critics of ethical lapses in President Donald Trump’s administration.
Jared Kushner is under scrutiny in the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation. In other news, water is wet.
— Maxine Waters (@RepMaxineWaters) May 26, 2017
Asked by The Daily Beast whether the group felt that Waters would be an effective critic of Trump’s own ethics given that history, Jordan Libowitz, a Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington spokesman, demurred.
“Going to have to pass on this one, I think that’s just a little too political of a question for us,” read an email from Libowitz, whose group is a key component of a well-funded network of political and policy outfits working to “kick Donald Trump’s ass,” in the words of Democratic operative David Brock, who formerly chaired CREW’s board and has remained active with the group this year.
“She’s the Auntie Boss”
Waters these days is favorably referred to as a “resistance” fighter—by the kind of groups and viral-content creators who enjoy using a hashtag in front of the word “resistance” to signal their hatred of President Trump.
A majority of Waters’ press releases since election day have attacked Trump or a member of his administration directly. Highlights include multiple references to the president’s “Kremlin Klan” and releases with blunt headlines such as “Shame on you, Donald Trump!” and “Waters to Trump: If you hate the Constitution so much, resign!”
“The financial dealings and alliances in this Trump-Putin circle present obvious conflicts of interest for the Trump Administration, and they are too significant to be ignored,” the congresswoman said in one release. Waters told CNN in February that she was “suspicious… about who he is, where he comes from, what his actions are, [and] all of his conflicts.”
Waters, a longtime liberal bomb-thrower, has served in Congress for decades, where she currently represents California’s 43rd Congressional District. Long before President Trump came along, she had been taking activist stances against such U.S.-supported calamities as the Iraq War and apartheid South Africa. When the Age of Trump kicked off, Waters furiously went on the attack against the new administration, earning herself newfound viral status among previously unfamiliar young audiences, as well as glowing profiles by seasoned political writers.
Left-leaning viral-politics websites now routinely praise Waters as a Trump-bashing “resistance leader,” the Democratic “rock star” of 2017, and an all-around “badass” for her unflagging commitment to trashing the president as a crooked and racist liar.
Waters continued her incursion into millennial pop culture early this month when she received a celeb-studded standing ovation at the MTV Movie and TV Awards, where she took the stage to present the coveted award for Best Fight Against the System. In recent weeks and months, she has made countless appearances on cable news and progressive media to censure the Trump administration and its allies, and scored a speaking slot next to progressive stalwart Rep. Keith Ellison at the Center for American Progress’s Ideas Conference earlier this month.
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