Sunday on CNN, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) decried Republicans and former President Donald Trump warning that they posed a threat to voting rights.
Waters singled out Republicans because of efforts within GOP-led state legislatures to shore election integrity.
Waters also called on attorneys general in Georgia and New York City to aggressively pursue Trump during her interview with Jim Acosta.
Partial transcript as follows:
Well, I want you to know that John Lewis gave his life to civil rights and this was a man who was beaten almost within an inch of his life on the Edmund Pettus Bridge defending the right to register to vote and voting rights. And to see what is happening now with all of these states coming up with suppression laws is something that I believe that he would have thought at one point that we had gotten past the attempts to keep blacks, in particular, from voting.
We’ve been through the poll tax days, counting the number of beans in a jar, and all of those things to keep us from being able to vote and here we have the Republicans leading in many of our states with their governors who are trying to take us back and trying to make sure that they put obstacles in the way of our voting. When you take a look at what’s happening in Georgia, where they’re talking about erasing 100,000 people from the rolls on the pretense, well, they didn’t vote in the last election or so.
When you look at what they’re doing to try to eliminate early voting days, when you’re looking at what they’re doing that makes the lines longer and then saying to us who would try to make people comfortable by giving them water in line that that somehow would be against the law.
This is a dangerous time for our democracy. This is a dangerous time because Trump, who served as the president of the United States for four years, has basically led this country to a point where he’s got believers and supporters who thinks that he is the president and he should be the president. And somehow, it’s been stolen and it’s got to be taken back.
So, January 6 may not be the only thing that they do when they invaded our capitol, when that insurrection took place. They may be organizing again.
As a matter of fact, on my way to the christening of the John Lewis Navy Ship, on that road leading into where the ships are being, you know, made, there were signs, big signs, on the street held by, you know, some of these men who support Trump. One sign said that Trump is the president. And is the president. And then, another sign touted the proud boys and saying that they were good people and that they had not done anything wrong.
And so, they are coming. They are not going to stop. And I know we’re trying to get our commission together, that Nancy Pelosi has tried to organize when they would not support the commission that was offered to try and get to the bottom of the insurrection. I know that we’re waiting on them to assign their people to it, to want to do right.
But in the final analysis, our attorneys generals, whether they’re in New York or in Georgia, they’ve got to go after him about how he’s cheated, you know, on his taxes. How his family has taken advantage of having a non-profit that they use like it was their own money. On and on and on.
One way or the other, we’ve got to stop Trump and his allies. It’s more than undermining our democracy. They’re dangerous and they’re out to do harm.
And so, we’re in a bad time in this country, trying to manage all of this. But we must manage it. We must protect our democracy.
We must not allow Trump to win.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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