Rep. Maxine Waters Skips Out On Trump's Address

Gina Mei
Updated
Photo credit: Getty
Photo credit: Getty

From Cosmopolitan

Rep. Maxine Waters has recently earned herself quite the reputation for masterfully throwing shade at the current administration - and she's showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

After making her feelings for President Donald Trump very clear over the past few months, the U.S. representative defended her decision not to attend Trump's first address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday by saying she had no desire to "honor" him with her attendance.

"This is ceremonial," Waters told MSNBC, while standing next to Rep. Eliot Engel, who Mic reports pledged not to greet the president during his address. "In this ceremony, people laugh, they smile, they shake hands, they hug each other, they honor the president. I'm not about any of that."

"I'm prepared to interact with the president only when he puts up his budget and his agenda that I'm going to have to fight," she continued. "So let's not talk about this ceremony in relationship to public policy - real public policy. I don't choose to go, I don't choose to go, I don't choose to honor him, I've said that, and I won't be a part of the ceremony, and that's that."

She later further addressed her decision to skip the speech in an interview with Mic, saying she could not participated in such a "celebratory" event.

"I don't feel that I could participate in the kind of honoring of a president who has so told us who he really is," she said. "And what he has said and the way that he's acted [shows] he is a man that should not be honored, who cannot be trusted. He's someone that has disparaged others, who has called names, who's intimidated, who's bullied."

"So for me, I don't participate in so-called celebrations with people that I don't honor and I don't believe in," she concluded.

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