Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) thinks Donald Trump should be impeached—simply because he coined the term “Crooked Hillary.”
Waters—who announced she’s boycotting Trump’s inauguration—was being interviewed on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, when asked why she considered Trump to be an illegitimate president—and whether or not he had committed impeachable offenses.
“If we discover that Donald Trump or his advocates played a role to help provide strategy — if they’re the ones who came up with ‘Crooked Hillary,’ if they’re the ones who came up with, ‘she’s ill, something’s wrong with her energy,’ and the way that he basically described her during the campaign — I think that is something that would put the question squarely on the table whether or not he should be impeached,” said Waters.
Whether or not Trump himself—as opposed to a member of his campaign staff—coined the term “Crooked Hillary,” he first used it on Twitter in April, when he tweeted: “Crooked Hillary Clinton is spending a fortune on ads against me. I am the one person she doesn’t want to run against. Will be such fun!”
Matthews, an unapologetically liberal pundit who famously was caught on an open mic discussing a “tingling” in his leg after hearing Obama speak, did not press Waters on her logic—or clarify that, no, name-calling is not an impeachable offense. Calling a political opponent “crooked” would certainly not fall under the “high crimes and misdemeanors” necessary, as written in the Constitution, to impeach the President of the United States.
Waters, incidentally, has a long history of transgressions that could land any politician in hot water: she was ranked by Judicial Watch as one of the Top Ten Wanted Corrupt Politicians, back in 2011.
Waters’ ranking came after she had been investigated by the House Ethics Committee for channeling $12 million to a failing bank—where her husband sat on the board of directors. She had also been repeatedly accused of skirting campaign finance law, and of helping enrich family members by favoring their business ventures in her official capacity as a member of Congress.
All of those are much larger ethical violations than political name-calling.
