Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) said on Monday that she and her fellow Democrats are too nice to Republicans, and that President-elect Donald Trump doesn’t have the values or honesty with which she can work.

“That has been a problem in my party, that when we’re in power we’re nice. We bend over backwards to work with people,” said Waters, who is the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. “Trump has stepped on everybody.”

Trump “has no respect for his own colleagues,” continued Waters. “He’s called names, he’s lied, he’s done everything to show that he really doesn’t have good values, and he can’t be trusted.”

Waters said she will not meet with Trump because of his “lying,” and that she “will fight him every step of the way” on his promises to gut the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

A Hilarious Claim

The Media Research Center’s Dan Gainor dismissed Waters’ claims in an e-mail to The Stream. That anyone would publicize her claim is “hilarious,” he said. “Remember, this is ‘I’ve Got A Pen And I’ve Got A Phone’ Obama’s presidency still. He spent the entire time eviscerating his opponents and demonizing conservative media.”

Additionally, said Gainor, “The altleft attacks anyone who even disagrees on its own side, much less anyone on the right. Liberals destroyed Hill staffer Elizabeth Lauten for even daring to criticize the Obama daughters, and they savage opponents for every non-PC tweet.”

Fact-checkers have recently run disputed claims by Trump that he won the electoral college in a “massive landslide,” as well as a Tweet claiming that millions of people voted illegally in the 2016 election. Despite this, Gainer said voters don’t seem to care.

President-elect Trump just ran against the candidate who had once falsely claimed she landed under gunfire. And Trump is replacing Obama, who claims to be pro-Israel and just stabbed that nation in the back. I think Americans have come to expect that politicians don’t always tell the truth.

President Barack Obama and members of his administration have told other falsehoods, such as several related to the Iran deal, firearms and abortion.

Insults are a Two-Way Street

Trump has often insulted his political opponents, such as calling Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) “Lyin’ Ted.” However, Trump’s primary opponent and critic Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) noted that many attacks Trump made against Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton are simply the reversal of claims made for decades by Democrats against Republicans.

How did these supposedly polite and respectful Democrats talk about Republicans the last time a Republican held the presidency? Did they rise to the congresswoman’s high standards? No. Leading Democrats regularly compared Republicans with the worst tyrants. Few of them were reprimanded by other Democrats. For example:

• Then-NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, a major figure in the Democratic party, compared American conservatives to the Taliban in 2001. Two years later, he said of Republicans, “Their idea of equal rights is the American flag and Confederate swastika flying side by side.”

• Democratic senators accused Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito of discriminatory beliefs towards non-whites and women.

•  During the Bush administration, prominent Democrats compared President George W. Bush or members of his administration to Hitler or to those working for Hitler. Among those talking this way were Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, himself a former KKK member, and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore. This column gives other examples.

President Obama wasn’t above similar tactics when he ran for re-election in 2012. He accused Mitt Romney of wanting to bring America back to its sexist and racist past. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman called Romney

a “charlatan,” pathologically dishonest, and untrustworthy. He said Romney doesn’t even pretend to care about poor people and wants people to die so that the rich could get richer. Romney is “completely amoral,” “a dangerous fool,” “ignorant as well as uncaring.”

Consequences

There’s a popular saying that an argument cannot be won after one debater or the other uses a Nazi analogy. That’s exactly the sort of behavior in which Waters, who in 2011 said that the Tea Party could “go to Hell,” and many of her allies in Congress and elsewhere have engaged. They want to know why Trump won on November 8? Time to look in the mirror, or listen to public relations consultant Karol Markowitz:

The media bear a lot of responsibility for the creation of Trump, and treating all Republican presidential candidates as if they’re a danger to American society is just one way they’ve done it.