‘Selma’ Director Ava DuVernay Rips Trump over Maxine Waters: ‘You Will Go Down in History As a Mistake’

Film director Ava DuVernay speaks during The Fast Company Innovation Festival presentation
Brad Barket/Getty Images for Fast Company
Warner Todd Huston

A Wrinkle in Time director Ava DuVernay ripped President Donald Trump in a Wednesday tweet in response to the president’s taunting of Democrat firebrand Maxine Waters.

DuVernay jumped to Twitter to call Trump a “mistake of history.”

“You have no sense of self outside of the disparagement of others,” DuVernay tweeted. “You project your weakness onto others. You are of no substance. You will go down in history as a mistake. A mistake that unified many, reminding us of the best in ourselves by being a violent example of the worst.”

In the Trump-trashing tweet, the Selma director was responding to President Trump’s social media missive, in which he called the increasingly shrill Waters the “FACE of the Democrat Party” and said her “crazy rants” are making America weak. Trump noted that he and the Republican Party are “not going anywhere” and will continue to make America great.

In a second tweet, the A-list Hollywood director warned the president that “women of color” are “replacing the old guard” and he better watch out.

Trump tweeted about his amazement that the Democrats lost New York Congressman Joe Crowley to a lesser-known primary challenger, who had been outspent 18-1. The president then joked that maybe the anti-Trump Crowley “should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President.”

But DuVernay saw a different message in Rep. Crowley’s loss to 28-year-old self-identified socialist candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “Ignore the women of color replacing the old guard at your own peril. Three words: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” DuVernay tweeted on Wednesday.

Of course, in his first tweet, Trump was referencing the rally California Rep. Maxine Waters led last weekend, where she ordered followers to attack Trump administration officials and their children and families in public spaces. Waters wanted mobs to descend on the officials’ homes and to attack them as they attended theaters or went out to eat or otherwise tried to get out and about.

Waters said, “I have no sympathy for these people that are in this administration who know it’s wrong for what they’re doing on so many fronts. They tend to not want to confront this president or even leave, but they know what they’re doing is wrong. I want to tell you, these members of his cabinet who remain and try to defend him, they won’t be able to go to a restaurant, they won’t be able to stop at a gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop at a department store. The people are going to turn on them. They’re going to protest. They’re absolutely going to harass them until they decide that they’re going to tell the president, ‘No, I can’t hang with you.’ This is wrong. This is unconscionable. We can’t keep doing this to children.”

She added, “We’ve got to push back. We’ve got to say no. I, for example, have stepped way out there. I said this man needs to be impeached. I know a lot of people think we’re not ready to say that. Some people have said a long time ago he would become presidential. He will never be presidential. This man does not have any good values. I believe he needs to be impeached. As a matter of fact, a long time before he’s doing what he’s doing now with these children. I think he had done enough to undermine this country and to have us understand we cannot trust him, that we should have come with an impeachment resolution. So, I believe we cannot wait until the next presidential election. We have to resist him. I want to see him impeached.”

Waters has been defiant over her comments, refusing to take them back or apologize for them and despite the clear implication of her call to arms, the Californian insists she is not calling for violence.

“I believe in peaceful, very peaceful protests,” Waters told reporters. “I have not called for the harm of anybody. This President has lied again when he’s saying that I’ve called for harm.”

Still, even left-wing New York Democrat Senator Chuck Schumer has decried Waters’ comments.

“I strongly disagree with those who advocate harassing folks if they don’t agree with you,” Schumer said on Monday.

“If you disagree with a politician, organize your fellow citizens to action and vote them out of office,” Schumer continued. “But no one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That’s not right. That’s not American.”

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.

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