Confronting Trump administration officials and supporters in public places and even at their homes is becoming the go-to tactic for #TheResistance.
Just in the last few days we have covered several such incidents:
The justification for this plan of confrontation and harassment is that the Trump administration (allegedly) are Nazis, and Nazis must be confronted and driven from public spaces.
The tactic has been endorsed by Jennifer Rubin, as relentless purveyor of anti-Trump derangement:
Nevertheless, it is not altogether a bad thing to show those who think they’re exempt from personal responsibility that their actions bring scorn, exclusion and rejection. If you don’t want to provoke wrath, don’t continue to work for someone whose cruel and inhumane treatment of others rivals the internment of U.S. citizens and noncitizens of Japanese descent during World War II. And yes, I’d have hollered at then-California Attorney General Earl Warren, who pushed for the roundup of people of Japanese ancestry, even American citizens.
There are far too many Twitter meltdowns to catalog, but this one by John Aravosis is pretty *good*:
This is a slippery slope to political violence, as I noted in this tweet response:
It’s bad enough when non-politicians engage in such meltdowns and implicit calls for violence.
But now a leading Democrat politician, Rep. Maxine Waters, is openly calling on #TheResistance to find and confront 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.”
Waters also made the call on MSNBC (transcript via RCP):
MAXINE WATERS: I have no sympathy for these people that are in this administration who know it’s wrong for what they’re doing on so many fronts. They tend to not want to confront this president or even leave, but they know what they’re doing is wrong. I want to tell you, these members of his cabinet who remain and try to defend him, they won’t be able to go to a restaurant, they won’t be able to stop at a gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop at a department store. The people are going to turn on them.They’re going to protest. They’re absolutely going to harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the president, ‘No, I can’t hang with you.’ This is wrong. This is unconscionable. We can’t keep doing this to children.We’ve got to push back. We’ve got to say no. I, for example, have stepped way out there. I said this man needs to be impeached. I know a lot of people think we’re not ready to say that. Some people have said a long time ago he would become presidential. He will never be presidential. This man does not have any good values. I believe he needs to be impeached. As a matter of fact, a long time before he’s doing what he’s doing now with these children. I think he had done enough to undermine this country and to have us understand we cannot trust him, that we should have come with an impeachment resolution. So, I believe we cannot wait until the next presidential election. We have to resist him. I want to see him impeached.
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