LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: California Rep Maxine Waters faced quite a backlash after delivering a misinformed jab at Melania Trump while tearing into her husband Donald Trump’s latest crackdown on birthright citizenship.
In an unhinged speech at a Los Angeles protest on Saturday, March 22, Waters made a bizarre and totally off-base implication that the first lady might not belong in the US at all.
Maxine Waters goes off the rails
Speaking at a rally against the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) cost-cutting initiatives, Maxine Waters did not hold back.
“We are here because we are not going to let Trump, we’re not going to let Elon Musk, his co-president, or anybody else take the United States Constitution down,” she said in her address to the crowd on Saturday.
She then dragged Melania Trump into the conversation while railing against President Trump’s attempts to end automatic citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants.
“When he [Trump] talks about birthright, and he’s going to undo the fact that the Constitution allows those who are born here, even if the parents are undocumented, they have a right to stay in America, if he wants to start looking so closely to find those who were born here and their parents were undocumented, maybe he ought to first look at Melania,” Waters declared.
But she didn’t stop there.
“We don’t know whether or not her parents were documented. And maybe we better just take a look,” she added.
Melania Trump’s immigration history and the birthright citizenship debate
Melania Trump was born in 1970 in Slovenia (formerly part of Yugoslavia). She moved to the US in 1996 on a travel visa and later secured an H1-B visa to work as a model. She officially became a US citizen in 2006—two years after marrying Donald Trump, Fox News reported.
Not only that, she made history as the first naturalized American to ever serve as first lady. The only other foreign-born first lady was Louisa Adams, who came from England and France way back in the early 1800s.
That said, Melania sponsored her parents for citizenship, which they officially obtained in 2018. Her mother, Amalija Knavs, sadly passed away in January last year.
Trump and his allies have long argued that the 14th Amendment’s birthright citizenship clause—stating that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States”—shouldn’t apply to children of undocumented immigrants.
He even signed an executive order in January ending birthright citizenship for children of migrants, arguing that the amendment was meant for former slaves and not modern-day immigration loopholes.
Internet drags Maxine Waters for Melania Trump dig
Many on social media lashed out after Maxine Waters’s speech, slamming her for the bizarre remarks.
“You literally have to work at it to be that much of an idiot,” one X user posted.
“Expel her from Congress,” another demanded.
“Maxine Waters needs to be removed,” someone else agreed.
“They can’t fix the economy. They can’t stop crime. So, Maxine Waters wants to deport Melania? That’s where we’re at now,” a comment read.
“I’ll steer clear of taking advice from the poorly spoken crypt keeper, thank ya very much,” another quipped.
This isn’t the first time Waters has gone all-in against Trump. She was one of his loudest critics during his first administration, notoriously calling on liberals to swarm and harass members of his team in public places.
