Maxine Waters: Next Supreme Court Justice Should Be an Illegal Immigrant-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, said the next justice appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court should be an illegal immigrant.
The Truth:
Maxine Waters didn’t call for an “illegal immigrant” to be appointed to the Supreme Court. The false rumor circulated in a meme before President Donald Trump named his nominee to succeed retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy in July 2018.
It’s not clear where the altered image originated. It’s been widely circulated on social media, however. The image shows Maxine Waters appearing on CNN, and the scroll at the bottom of the screen was edited to read, “Waters: SCOTUS Pick Should Be Illegal Immigrant.”
In realty, the screen shot was taken from an interview in which Maxine Waters defended comments she made about President Trump at an immigration rally in October 2017. Waters said “I will take Trump out tonight.” Waters said during the interview that the idea is “that is absolutely ridiculous.” She said the only harm she would do to the president is to impeach him during the follow-up interview.
Maxine Waters, one of the president’s most outspoken critics in Congress, has been the subject of various false and misleading claims. These false rumors are often designed to paint waters as ignorant of basic laws, or hypocritical. False claims that Waters called for an illegal immigrant to be appointed to the high court are just the latest.