Wednesday on MSNBC, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) had a heated exchange with anchor Peter Alexander over President Donald Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey.
Partial transcript as follows:
WATERS: I do not necessarily support the president’s decision. If the president had not gone all over the country praising him about Hillary and the emails, if the president had not said he had confidence in him, if the president had not said he was a part of his team —
ALEXANDER: But congresswoman, I understand in the past he was praising him. If you said that James Comey had no credibility, wouldn’t you support the president’s decision to get rid of him?
WATERS: No no no, not necessarily.
ALEXANDER: Why not?
WATERS: You have an investigation going on where the president is implicated. And this is a serious investigation. I’ve been trying on get people to focus this connection with the Kremlin and with Putin. I have a resolution that I introduced in February. I think there’s enough there that we know about the Kremlin and about Putin to be concerned about whether or not there was collusion.
ALEXANDER: So to be clear —
WATERS: And that I believe they should have to connect the dots and get the facts. I think it will lead to the impeachment of this president.
ALEXANDER: So respecting that, to be clear, you believe it would have been better to keep in place an FBI director who you said had no credibility to oversee this investigation, than to find someone who you think would be a better choice?
WATERS: No. But the president thought that. Don’t forget you’re talking about what some Democrats said, what I said, but don’t forget, he was the president. The president supported him. He had confidence in him. It was within his power.
ALEXANDER: But you said he had no credibility, so it would make sense that he get rid of him?
WATERS: No no no no. Under investigation, this president basically has interfered with an investigation where he may be implicated. That’s outrageous, and that’s why we’re having so much of a conversation about it today. Everybody is talking about it. This is highly unusual.
ALEXANDER: The bottom line is that you think an FBI director without credibility would have been better in this position.
WATERS: The bottom line is if the president had fired him when he first came in, he would not have to be in a position now where he is trying to make up a story about why. It does not pass the smell test.
ALEXANDER: So if Hillary Clinton had won the White House, would you have recommended that she fire FBI Director James Comey?
WATERS: Well, let me tell you something. If she had won the White House, I believe that given what he did to her, and what he tried to do, she should have fired him. Yes.
ALEXANDER: So she should have fired him but he shouldn’t fire him. This is why I’m confused.
WATERS: You’re not confused. If the president is implicated in an investigation —
ALEXANDER: I am confused.
WATERS: The president of the United States, who has a history, who fires people who get close to him and his allies like Flynn, and like Mrs. Yates, he will fire them if he believes somehow they’re getting too close to him in these investigations. I believe that the president of the United States should not have done this in the middle of an investigation. That’s it.
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