Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) is on a political mission, and she is confident God has got her back.
Standing behind the behemoth pulpit at First AME Church in Los Angeles, the progressive lawmaker conflated partisanship and religion, declaring she has been sent by God to take on President Donald Trump and his allies.
“I have no fear. I’m in this fight. I know that there are those who are talking about censuring me, talking about kicking me out of Congress, talking about shooting me, talking about hanging me,” Waters told congregants Sunday. “All I have to say is this: If you shoot me, you better shoot straight. There’s nothing like a wounded animal.”
Waters has no intention of toning down her message, despite calls to do so from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) because, in her words, “We can walk and chew gum at the same time.”
Regardless of how her divisive rhetoric might further erode our national discourse, the 79-year-old politician is confident God has propped her up to do everything in her power to combat the president.
“You’ve gotta know that I’m here to do the work that I was sent to do, and as pastor said to me when I came in this morning, ‘When God sends you to do something, you just do it,’” she said. “So I have a message I’m going back to Washington tomorrow morning, I’m going to tell them pastor told me to come here and just do it.”
This is not the first time Waters has invoked God for political gain.
She similarly claimed the Almighty was “on our side” when she urged her fellow liberals in late June to harass members of the Trump administration.
“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, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere,” she said at the time.