It’s not hard for the layman to mistake one exotic-sounding place for another —but when you’re a politician speaking about world issues, it’s the last mistake you want to make, especially when the areas you mix up aren’t all that unusual to begin with.
In her desire to see President Donald Trump impeached, Rep. Maxine Waters confused the Eastern European region of Crimea with one of America’s greatest allies in Asia, Korea.
The two places are about as far apart as Ibiza and Iraq—one’s the party capital of the world, while the other’s a place where the only people having a jam are clad in black and carrying AK47s and the theme is the death of Western Civilization.
Last Friday, the Californian Democrat told the Cheddar video service she hoped to “lead [Trump] right into impeachment”. She clarified her statement on Monday at a news conference to say that she wasn’t directly calling for his impeachment “yet” and that he was simply “doing it himself.”
The statement was low on fact and high on speculation.
“Let me just say the statement I made was a statement in response to questions and pleas that I am getting from many citizens across this country,” Waters said. “What are we going to do?”
“How can a president, who is acting in the manner that he’s acting, whether he’s talking about the travel ban, the way that he’s talking to Muslims, or whether he’s talking about his relationship to Putin, and the Kremlin — and knowing that they have hacked our D-triple-C—DNC, and knowing that he is responsible for supplying the bombs that killed innocent children and families in Aleppo,” Waters said.
She continued: “And the fact that he is wrapping his arms around Putin while Putin is continuing to advance into Korea – I think that he is leading himself into that kind of position where folks will begin to ask, what are we going to do?”
“And the answer is going to be, eventually, we’ve got to do something about him. We cannot continue to have a president who’s acting in this manner,” she added. “It’s dangerous to the United States of America.”
Her reference to Korea was undoubtedly intended to mean Crimea. Russia annexed the former Ukrainian territory in early 2014 in the aftermath of the Ukrainian revolution, spurring wider unrest across other parts of Ukraine.
If Waters want to make a convincing argument about geopolitics, she should consider brushing up on her geography.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on Facebook.