CNN analyst calls Trump racist for saying Maxine Waters is ‘low IQ’

CNN analyst Jeffrey Toobin on Friday slammed President Trump for his attacks on Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), calling them “racist.”

During a rally in Montana on Thursday night, Trump called Waters a “low-IQ individual,” which is a description the president has used many times in reference to the congresswoman. The president also speculated Waters’s IQ was “somewhere in the mid-60s,” though the average IQ is 85-114.

“How about this Maxine Waters stuff over and over again?” Toobin said in reference to Trump’s remarks on CNN. “’Low IQ.’ How racist is that?” 

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“Come on. Just be honest about this. How many black people does the president have to attack in these terms?” Toobin continued. “I mean, he’s always –– whether it’s NFL football players or, you know, UCLA basketball players –– I mean come on. Is it a coincidence that he calls a senior black legislator ‘low IQ’? It’s revolting and we should just be clear about what’s going on here.”

Trump made a similar attack targeting the Democratic lawmaker’s intelligence last week after Waters, a vocal critic who has long called for Trump’s impeachment, faced significant backlash for her comments encouraging supporters to confront Trump administration officials in public.

“I have no sympathy for these people that are in this administration who know it is wrong, what they’re doing, on so many fronts but they tend to not want to confront this president,” Waters said at a rally in Los Angeles. 

“For these members of his Cabinet who remain and try to defend him … The people are going to turn on them; they’re going to protest. They’re going to absolutely 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 and we can’t keep doing this to children,'” she continued.

Waters’s controversial remarks arrived as the Trump administration continued to face opposition over its “zero-tolerance” immigrant policy.