Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., announced Thursday she has canceled two upcoming events after receiving a “very serious death threat,” just days after she advocated for liberals to accost members of the Trump administration in public settings.
“As the President has continued to lie and falsely claim that I encouraged people to assault his supporters, while also offering a veiled threat that I should ‘be careful’, even more individuals are leaving (threatening) messages and sending hostile mail to my office,” she said in a statement.
“There was one very serious death threat made against me on Monday from an individual in Texas which is why my planned speaking engagements in Texas and Alabama were cancelled (sic) this weekend,” she continued. “This is just one in several very serious threats the United States Capitol Police is investigating in which individuals threatened to shoot, lynch, or cause me serious bodily harm.”
[Also read: Sean Hannity ties Annapolis newspaper shooting to Maxine Waters]
Waters encouraged attendees at a rally in Los Angeles on Saturday to harass members of the Trump administration in public, comments that fellow Democrats pushed back upon.
“Already you have members of your Cabinet that are being booed out of restaurants. We have protesters taking up at their house who are saying, ‘No peace, no sleep. No peace, no sleep,’” Waters said.
“If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd,” she added. “And you push back on them. Tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere!”
Waters later claimed that she was not calling for violence, but rather peaceful protests.
“I believe in peaceful, very peaceful protests,” Waters said. “I have not called for the harm of anybody. This President has lied again when he’s saying that I’ve called for harm.”
Earlier this month, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was harassed by activists in D.C. Additionally, a restaurant owner in Lexington, Va., requested that White House press secretary Sarah Sanders leave the restaurant last weekend.
