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Maxine Waters Claps Back At President Trump: 'How Dare You'

LOS ANGELES (CNN)  -- US Rep. Maxine Waters kept up the heat on President Trump at an immigration rally Saturday in Los Angeles.

"How dare you?" said Waters, a California Democrat and frequent Trump critic. "How dare you take the babies from mothers' arms? How dare you take the children and send them all across the country into so-called detention centers?"

Waters has been warring with Trump lately amid a broader discussion of "civility" in politics, which gained some traction after White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant.

Waters then encouraged people to heckle and harass Cabinet members in public.

In response, Trump tweeted that Waters had called for "harm" to his supporters and spoke against her in rallies.

Waters denied calling for violence.

Her speech Saturday was part of the "Families Belong Together" rallies held across the country. Protesters gathered to show opposition to Trump's "zero tolerance" toward undocumented immigrants, which has separated thousands of children from their parents.

She continued, "You are putting them in cages. You are putting them in jails. And you think we're going to stand by and allow you to do that? I don't think so. Donald Trump, you think you can get away with everything, but you have gone too far when you are trying to break up families in the way that you do."

Waters likened the situation to slavery.

"As an African-American woman, I was raised on the stories about what happened on the auction block when they auctioned off Africans" and broke up families, she told listeners.

She also had caustic advice for those who have made threats against her, increasingly, she said, since she and Trump have sparred.

"If you shoot me, you better shoot straight," Waters said. "There's nothing like a wounded animal."

The-CNN-Wire
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