There are several disadvantages to being a usually talkative someone like Democratic Representative Maxine Waters.
Your wordiness may diminish enslavement. Your inflammatory language may provoke violence. And your surplus words may promote lies that have long since been disproved.
Worst of all however? Your excessive use of language might very well end up shooting you in the foot.
Waters reportedly received a figurative gunshot wound to her foot during a disagreement with Republican Rep. Chip Roy during a Tuesday House Rules Committee meeting titled “Decrying the Horrors of Socialism.”
The important conversation is shown below:
Certainly, the dialogue begins innocuously enough.
Roy begins by referencing an editorial published by a Cuban Democrat voter, using it to ridicule Waters’ prior support for socialism.
“(This voter) essentially pointing out the extent to which Democratic socialism is a lot like ‘the system my family fled except its proponents promise to be nicer when seizing your business.’ And that’s the truth,” Roy said.
The Texas representative then proceeded to bring up another statement, this time from Waters’s ever-excessive vocabulary.
“Ranking Member Waters, in a 2008 hearing, you said, quote, ‘And guess what this liberal will be all about? this liberal will be all about socializing, would be about basically taking over the government, and the government running all of your companies.’ End quote. Simple question: Do you stand by that statement?” Roy asked.
“Simple answer,” Waters begins, before proceeding to provide an answer that is quite literally anything but.
“I am here today, in this Rules Committee because we’re taking up time with basically a non-issue,” Waters said. “First of all, you claim that socialism has engulfed this country, that it keeps creeping, it’s going to take over private businesses, etc. etc. That is not happening.
“We’re in a democracy that we’re trying very much to save and to not have disrupted, undermined, in the way that…”
At this point, Roy, who is plainly sick up with Waters’ excessive word salad, merely asks her to disown her 2008 words once more.
“I am not a socialist,” Waters said. “I’m a capitalist. And I commit to you that I am here to save Social Security, to save Medicare, to save seniors and veterans and for some of you who have adopted certain kind of ways that you support what you now claim is socialism, I’m here to say to you: Come on.”
It’s at this point that Roy, once again, presents Waters’s own words to her.
“So ‘this liberal will be all about socializing. Will be all about basically taking over and the government running all of your companies …’ You disagree with that? You now denounce that statement?” Roy asked.
“I am not a socialist,” Waters said.
At this moment, Roy appeared to accept Waters’s response, but only after painfully exposing her and her ideals.
Imagine how much different this entire conversation would have been if Waters had not been so prone to over babbling.
Fortunately for her adversaries, Waters has a tendency to speak excessively, so videos like the one above will likely never be scarce.