Rep. Maxine Waters has a gavel and she wants everyone to know it. If you don’t properly acquiesce to ‘her highness’ she will use it on your head as a reminder of who is in charge. At the end of a three-and-half-hour testimony before the House Appropriations Committee and Financial Services Committee, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had the ‘audacity’ to remind the committee of a prior agreement he had to leave the meeting at 5 p.m. for a meeting with a senior official from the Bahrain government. That didn’t sit well with Waters, whose ego is obviously still bruised after her failed Impeach Trump movement. “Lo and behold, a Trump appointee sits before me….”
“It will be embarrassing if I keep this person waiting for a long period of time,” Mnuchin said.
His departure, however, did not come without a heated back-and-forth with Waters.
“Unfortunately, we are all pressed for time,” said the California congresswoman, whose committee grilled Mnuchin about his plans to respond to Democrats’ requests for access to President Trump’s tax returns.
Waters refused to formally dismiss Mnuchin, whom she asked to stay for an additional 10 minutes, Bloomberg reported. “This is a new way and it’s a new day. And it’s a new chair. And I have the gavel,” she said.
Waters said at that point that “If you wish to leave you may.”
“Can you clarify that for me?” Mnuchin asked.
He had good instincts to be wary at that moment. If he had simply left, Waters would likely have publically accused him later of having left without being properly dismissed.
Mnuchin said he’d “rethink” whether he would return to sit before the committee if he was going to be poorly treated.
“If you’d wish to keep me here so that I don’t have my important meeting and continue to grill me, then we can do that,” he said. “I will cancel my meeting and I will not be back here. I will be very clear if that’s the way you’d like to have this relationship.”
After Waters proceeded to continue with the hearing, Mnuchin again chimed in to clarify whether or not Waters was “instructing” him to stay, and therefore, cancel his meeting.
“You made me an offer that I accepted,” Waters said. “No, I’m not ordering you. I said you may leave anytime you want and you said OK.”
Mnuchin replied that he could not leave until Waters dismissed him. “You’re supposed to take the gavel and bang it,” he said.
Waters then interrupted him, saying, “Please do not instruct me as to how I am to conduct this committee.”
Mnuchin was eventually advised by staff that he was not obligated to stay and could leave. Before Waters ended the hearing at 5:30 p.m., Mnuchin withdrew his offer to return before the committee in May.
Source: Fox News
He couldn’t understand English. ” arnt ya soppost ta hit the gravel?”