Maxine Waters Quotes

I am so offended by Trump. I spend an awful lot of time helping to educate people about who I think he is and the danger that I think he is to this country. I will be working on those issues and trying to expose this president. I think that's important work.

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.

[Maxine Waters] was kind enough to join us here at our studios in Washington, D.C., in advance of women's march in Washington in which she will be participating.

It's time for the bully pulpit of the White House to bring the gangstas in, put them around the table and let them know that if they don't come up with loan modifications and keep people in their homes that they've worked so hard for, we're gonna tax them out of business.

All of these people who are organized with these oil-and-gas interests, that's in the administration and friends of the President of the United States [Donald Trump], these back channeling that you see. These are a bunch of scumbags. That's what they are.

If you call it a riot, it sounds like it was just a bunch of crazy people who went out and did bad things for no reason. I maintain it was somewhat understandable, if not acceptable. So I call it a rebellion.

Black women are going to have to take more leadership. I think we are prepared because we bring a tenaciousness with us. We do not fear losing friends, allies, or jobs.

Instead of going on a beach vacation to Hawaii, you could go to a Democratic convention, a state convention, a conference being held to discuss issues you care about, or even go hear a politician speak. Soon your life is all about government and politics and you delve into issues and public policy. When you do that, not only do you learn to be a good candidate for office, but you also learn to be a good elected official.

Some are arguing that the Democrats should resist at every turn [to Donald's Trump administration], and some Democrats are saying that's the strategy that Democrats should now employ.

I think that people should do what their heart and soul tells them to do.

I don't have to give [Donald Trump] a chance.

I have to march because my mother could not have an abortion.

I can't stop [Donald Trump] from doing what he wants to do.

I think that the Republicans who have been cautious, recognizing that they have to be concerned about their re-elections, etc., they won't be able to stand with Donald Trump when we unfold his connection to the Kremlin and what they were involved in, which I consider to be collusion. I don't think that any Republican, even moderates or conservatives, who love America and who consider themselves patriots, they cannot stand with this president when it appears he has participated in undermining this democracy. They're going to have to fall. That's what I believe.

[Rex] Tillerson is there to get these sanctions [against Russia] lifted. I believe it. Just watch him!

You cannot be successful and continue to be a victim.

This nation has always struggled with how it was going to deal with poor people and people of color. Every few years you will see some great change in the way that they approach this. We've had the war on poverty that never really got into waging a real war on poverty

The most upsetting part of the new administration is discovering that the person who won the election and became the president of the United States of America is a man who has no good values. His character astounds me. I can't believe that we have a president who would lie, who would distort, and who does not appear to have an appreciation for government and how it works.

Others say that that's not good for the country [to resist Donald's Trump ] and that they should work with this new administration on policies.

I have a right to my anger, and I don't want anybody telling me I shouldn't be, that it's not nice to be, and that something's wrong with me because I get angry.

I think it's more than bank records. I think that you can see that visits, you know, to Moscow were made during the campaign by Paul Manafort and others. I think that there was a cooperation in developing strategy about how Russians could ensure that Hillary Clinton was not elected. They need Donald Trump. Trump will be there to support lifting those sanctions. That's what they really want to happen.

I don't try to think about how I can satisfy those who would criticize me, or plot and plan to work in ways that will not get criticism. I tend to follow what I really believe. If I believe in something strongly and I act on it, then whatever comes with that territory comes.

If sequestration takes place, that's going to be a great setback. We don't need to be having something like sequestration that's going to cause these job losses - over 170 million jobs that could be lost.

[Carly Fiorina] can argue it all she wants, but I don't believe that.

First of all, I would tell any young woman who's interested in politics to get in touch with herself first and really, really determine if this is what she wants to do - and not do it just because it may be the thing at the moment. What do you care about? What is it that moves you? What would you like to change? What would you do if you were in this situation?

I think that when you saw Donald Trump absolutely calling Hillary Clinton crooked, the "lock her up, lock her up," all of that was developed. I think that was developed strategically with people from the Kremlin, with Vladimir Putin.

Take a look at the way that Trump has described some of the foreign countries that we deal with - some that are allies and some that are not. China is one example. He said they were currency manipulators, but after he sat down with President Xi and had a piece of chocolate cake, he then said they were no longer currency manipulators.

Policy, for the most part, has been made by white people in America, not by people of color. And they have tended to take care of those things that they think are important. Whether it's their agricultural subsidies, or other kinds of expenditures that are certainly not expenditures for poor people or for people of color. And so we have to band together and keep fighting back.

[Rex Tillerson] is gonna continue to work on [sanctions lifting]. This is important for him. He was there [in White House] because he negotiated the deal for Exxon with [Vladimir] Putin.

If [Donald Trump] wants to do good things, let's see it. Let him do it. I can't stop him from doing good things.

The president of the United States who has a history of firing people who get close to, you know, him and his allies like Flynn, and like Miss Yates, he will fire them if he believes somehow they're getting too close to him in the investigations. I believe that the president of the United States should not have fired Comey in the middle of an investigation.

I think that there's a great disrespect for women under this administration, led by the president Trump. Not only did the world discover what he said about grabbing women by their private parts, but just recently the president stepped forward to defend Bill O'Reilly after it was unveiled that O'Reilly had paid out millions of dollars for sexual harassment.

I'm not against anybody having gone [to Donald Trump's inauguration], but, for me, it was not the right place to be.

The shouting, the overrunning of the Capitol, the sneaking in of Tea Party participants into the basement of the Capitol, the name-calling, the spitting, all of that... The Tea Party emerges as not only outrageous, but they have turned up the volume in ways that even Code Pink have not been able to do.

We do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and particularly Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Frank Raines.

Many other cities could go the way that Los Angeles went last night unless the president is willing to step in and take some strong action in terms of letting people know that he cares about this issue.

Trump is probably disrespected women all of his life. His alignment with women has been with his beauty pageants. And those women said he walked into the rooms where they were changing clothes and he thought that was fine and he had a right to do it. I think that's reflected in his leadership and public policy.

Let's take a look at NAFTA. Trump said that NAFTA was a bad deal and he was going to get rid of it in the first 100 days. Now, that's also off the table. He's made a lot of promises that he can't keep. He has distorted information. I do not think he should not be president of the United States. And I think our allies and people in other countries are looking at America and saying, "This can't be. How did this happen?"

First, let me just say that I flew in from Los Angeles last evening. And the plane was absolutely filled with women who were coming from the Greater Los Angeles area to be here. And it wasn't that they were necessarily organized in some particular group. Individual women that I talked to - I said, well, who are you with? They said I'm not with anybody. I just decided I couldn't stay home. I just got up, and I came [to the Women's March].

The anger that you see expressed out there in Los Angeles, in my district this evening, is a righteous anger, and it's difficult for me to say to the people, "Don't be angry." When people are angry and enraged, they do do senseless things. They do act even sometimes out of character, and that's why it is the responsibility of America to try and avoid putting people in these kinds of situations.

Why do you think [Russians] hacked into our election? Because they have to make sure that Donald Trump got elected so that he could help them with what I think is a huuuuge deal, not only to lift these sanctions, but to take over, y'know, all of these Soviet countries and pull 'em back into the Soviet Union, so that they could have access it to all of these resources. It's clear to me!

I was very impressed with that that women have come here to say that we're going to fight you, Donald Trump.

I really do believe that much of what coming out of Donald Trump's mouth was a play from Vladimir Putin's playbook.

On Immigration policy and reform [Republicans] are on the wrong side of the track. ... They would have you believe that if they get into office, they are going to make sure that they are going to get rid of everyone in our society who was not born in America.

I just think the American people had better understand what's going on. This is a bunch of scumbags. That's what [Russians] are!

I do not necessarily support the president's decision.

Every time I've talked about impeachment, I've said we've got to connect the dots, we've got to get the facts, we've got to do the investigation. That is what leads to impeachment and I also said that Donald Trump will lead us right there.

So let's see what they [Republicans] are going to do. If they're going to put together great programs, and everybody understands that they're good.