In June 2018, Democratic California Rep. Maxine Waters unleashed a Pandora’s box.
Firing up a crowd of her supporters, the left-wing lawmaker urged Americans to harass and intimidate Trump officials in response to the administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy.
“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And 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.
“And 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” ~Maxine Watershttps://t.co/gPGQx7ouqn pic.twitter.com/cTQ0Is448I
— Frank (@rodriQuez) August 28, 2023
Waters is a loon, a Democrat on the fringe who keeps getting re-elected to Congress because she serves a deeply blue district in southern Los Angeles. She can spew unhinged and inflammatory rhetoric, such as the time in April 2021 when she called on BLM agitators to “get more confrontational” with Minnesota police, and never face consequences. Americans — and certainly her constituents — have grown accustomed to her dangerous outbursts and calls for violence.
Now, 100 days into the second Trump administration, leading national Democrats are pulling a Maxine Waters and fecklessly escalating their rhetoric to incite their base and intimidate political opponents.
In a speech Sunday, Democratic Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, the billionaire Hyatt hotel heir, called for mass “disruption” across the country, and compared Republicans and Trump officials to “tyrants and traitors.” As if that was bad enough, Pritzker previously compared Trump and Republicans to Nazis in February. (RELATED: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker Ramps Up National Profile For Possible Presidential Bid)
WATCH: Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker calls for mass protests & “disruption.”
“These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.” pic.twitter.com/ebtATThuDc
— Breaking911 (@Breaking911) April 28, 2025
“It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once. Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now,” Pritzker told the crowd at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s annual McIntyre-Shaheen dinner. “These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace. They have to understand that we will fight their cruelty with every megaphone and microphone that we have. We must castigate them on the soapbox, and then punish them at the ballot box.”
He went on to demagogue, “They must feel in their bones that when we survive this shameful episode of American history with our democracy intact — because we have no alternative but to do just that — that we will relegate their portraits to museum halls reserved for tyrants and traitors.”
Meanwhile, Democratic Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who delivered the Democratic rebuttal to Trump’s first joint address, is testing out “militaristic” language in a series of speeches on how her party can “contain and defeat” the president.
“It’s a military-style operational plan. I don’t understand how to rally us into a coherent approach if we aren’t on the same page on where we’re going,” Slotkin told Politico.
“I thought it was very important to put something down on paper, but it wasn’t to liken him to ISIS or anything like that,” she said of the rhetoric. “It was just to say if you want to counter something that you see as a problem, you got to have a plan or what else are you doing?”
No, Slotkin and her fellow Democrats are not likening Trump to an ISIS leader. They’re only likening him to a Nazi dictator, and treating their strategy to hamstring his agenda as a “military-style operational plan.”
Both Slotkin and Pritzker know exactly what they are doing when they provoke political violence against Trump and half of the country. Ahead of the 2026 midterms, they need to get their party out of a slump, rebrand its entire platform away from the toxic wokeness that fueled Trump’s landslide win, and give the base what it wants: an existential fight against a fascist takeover. Selfishly, they want to elevate themselves on the national stage, rake in fundraising dollars, and, of course, win praise from pundits on MSNBC.
But at what cost?
The base is listening and taking the words to heart. A new survey showed that 72% of Democrats believe Trump is a ‘fascist’ dictator, a number that might explain another recent poll. According to data from the Network Contagion Research Institute, 55% of self-identified “left of center” Americans believe a Trump assassin would be “somewhat justified,” while 13% believed the murder would be “completely justified.” (RELATED: Why Are So Many Democrats Okay With Killing Trump? One Poll Has The Answer)
And so, too, are would-be assassins. Ryan Routh, the deranged, Ukraine-obsessed liberal charged in the second assassination attempt on Trump, listened. In April 2024, months before he took a rifle to Trump’s golf course, he posted, “DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose. We cannot afford to fail. The world is counting on us to show the way.”
“DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose.” Routh fully imbibed the MSDNC cocktail of hate. pic.twitter.com/VxEZTDvU7U
— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) September 15, 2024
You could lift that sentence verbatim, plop it into a Slotkin or Pritzker speech, and never tell the difference between a mentally unstable man who wanted to put a bullet in a presidential candidate and a prominent national Democrat with eyes on the Oval Office.
That’s when you know you are not just acting irresponsibly by using militaristic language and comparing Trump to a Nazi traitor. You are acting insane.
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This article was originally published at dailycaller.com
