As the Trump's "Zero Tolerance" policy continues to rip apart families, members of his administration have faced much-needed public backlash. Recently, Kristjen Nielsen, the secretary of Homeland Security, and Stephen Miller, a White House senior adviser, were confronted at Mexican restaurants for their racist policies. People have written about the hypocrisy of them eating Mexican food while violently policing the U.S.-Mexico border. Similarly, a restaurant in Virginia refused to serve Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on moral grounds.
Conservatives have called the confrontations inappropriate, but one Democratic congresswoman is here for them. The inimitable Maxine Waters spoke at a rally in Los Angeles on Saturday, encouraging people there to confront members of the Trump Administration who are complicit in the U.S. government's inhuman treatment of immigrants at the border.
"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," she said. "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.'"
In response, President Trump has taken to Twitter to make angry, brash comments about Waters' intelligence. He wrote, "Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party. She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max!"
Other Republican officials have also pushed back, including Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who said at today's White House press briefing that "we are allowed to disagree but we should be able to do so freely but without fear of harm."
Her remarks are ironic given the extent to which the Republican Party, and the U.S. government in general, polices the daily lives of people of color, queer people, and women. Police officers disproportionately harm and incarcerate Black and Latinx people, lawmakers, who are often men, try to tell women what they can and cannot do with their bodies, and the Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of a baker whose rampant homophobia caused him to not want to make a wedding cake for a gay couple. All of these policy decisions cause marginalized people to live in fear every day.
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