Biden Says He Wants Maxine Waters to Become a Senator: ‘You Think I’m Kidding? I’m Not’
President Joe Biden quipped at a bill signing ceremony that he wanted to see headline-making Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) in the U.S. Senate.
The comment came when Waters and Rep. Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-IL) joined him at a Wednesday ceremony in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building next to the White House.
“Hey Chuy, how are you, man?” Biden said, shaking Garcia’s hand. He then shook Waters’ hand and said, “Senator, I hope. You think I’m kidding — I’m not.”
The only problem: California’s two Senate seats are both occupied by Democrats.
The next election will take place in 2022, when Sen. Alex Padilla will be seeking to win his first election to the seat. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) appointed him to the position this year to fill the vacancy created when its previous occupant, Kamala Harris, was elected as vice president.
The second seat is held by 88-year-old Sen. Dianne Feinstein, whose status as the Senate’s oldest member led to grumbling when she sought reelection in 2018 by some California Democrats who believed she should retire.
The 83-year-old Waters, who has represented California in the House since 1992, has a history of making comments that attract national attention. She called in 2018 for critics of the Trump administration to “get out and create a crowd” to “push back” on administration officials whenever they were spotted “in a restaurant, in a department store, [or] at a gasoline station.”
And this year, she traveled to Minnesota to tell protesters they should “get more confrontational” if a jury failed to find former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin guilty of murder for killing George Floyd. House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) introduced an unsuccessful resolution to censure Waters for the remark.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — the dean of California’s delegation — stood by Biden’s side as he made the comment. After smiling widely and surveying the room for a few moments, Pelosi cracked to Biden, “She has a bigger job.”
Watch above via C-SPAN.
