House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called for unity on Monday after Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) urged her supporters to confront Trump Cabinet officials in public places like restaurants and stores.
“In the crucial months ahead, we must strive to make America beautiful again,” Pelosi said in a tweet. “Trump’s daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are predictable but unacceptable. As we go forward, we must conduct elections in a way that achieves unity from sea to shining sea.”
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) called on Pelosi to condemn Waters’ comments earlier in a tweet on Monday.
Waters called on her supporters at a Los Angeles rally on Saturday to confront Cabinet officials in public to protest the Trump administration’s policies.
“I have no sympathy for these people that are in this administration who know it is wrong what they’re doing on so many fronts but they tend to not want to confront this president,” Waters said.
“For these members of his Cabinet who remain and try to defend him, they’re not going to be able to go to a restaurant. They’re not going to be able to stop at a gas station. They’re not going to be able to shop at a department store,” she added. “The people are going to turn on them. They’re going to protest. They’re going to absolutely 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, and we can’t keep doing this to children.'”
Waters’ comments and Pelosi’s tweet came after the owner of the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Va., asked White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave the restaurant because of her role in the White House.
Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings (Md.), the ranking member on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, weighed in on Friday night’s incident at the restaurant.
“The restaurant owner should have served her,” Cummings said in an interview Sunday. “But this tone is horrible. But again, I think President Trump has created this.”
Other officials have faced similar public backlash. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was heckled at a Washington restaurant recently over the administration’s handling of the separation of immigrant families at the U.S. border.
Demonstrators yelled “shame” at Nielsen and “End Texas concentration camps” last week while she dined at a Mexican restaurant.
Protesters also blasted audio of crying immigrant children who had been separated from their parents, outside of Nielsen’s home on Friday morning.