Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., known to stoke the political flames against President Donald Trump and his supporters, recently protested against the administration's policies on illegal immigration, suggesting first lady Melania Trump's parents came to the U.S. illegally.
A portion of Waters' rant at a rally Saturday in Los Angeles was caught on a video that was widely posted on social media. The outburst about the first lady, a native of Slovenia, who has been a naturalized U.S. citizen since 2006, came when Waters was talking about the president's efforts to eliminate birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants born on U.S. soil.
Supporters of birthright citizenship have said the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which states "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside," covers children born to illegal immigrants.
"When he 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," Waters said. "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.
"We don't know, whether or not, her parents were documented. And maybe we better just take a look."
Melania Trump's parents, Viktor and Amalija Knavs, became U.S. citizens in 2018. Amalija Knavs died in 2024, and Viktor Knavs has been seen at public events with the Trump family in recent months, including sitting next to grandson Barron Trump during the inauguration.
A spokesperson for the first lady's office declined to comment to Newsmax.
This continues a trend of inflammatory rhetoric from Waters, 86, who has represented California's 43rd congressional district since 1991. Earlier this month, at another rally in Los Angeles, this time to protest Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency, she said about Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen from South Africa, "Send him back from wherever he came from."
Also, earlier this month in a video posted on X, Waters suggested Musk interfered with the 2024 presidential election results.
"We don't know everything that Elon Musk has done with his high-technology a**," she said. "We don't know what he has been accused of by some as it may relate to the election."
In a post early Wednesday on X, Musk cryptically wrote: "At some point, the many crimes of Maxine Waters will catch up to her."
Waters is notorious for a 2018 rant during the president's first administration in which she called for publicly pushing back against Cabinet officials.
"If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere," she said.
Newsmax reached out to Waters for comment.
Michael Katz ✉
Michael Katz is a Newsmax reporter with more than 30 years of experience reporting and editing on news, culture, and politics.
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