Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Dershowitz Disputes Maxine Waters’ Racism Allegations

Alan Dershowitz laced into Rep. Maxine Waters after the California Democrat accused the retired Harvard Law School professor of being racist for his comments on the Russia investigation.

“She tosses around that term so promiscuously that it dilutes the term. She hurts her own cause because she’s crying wolf,” Dershowitz said on Fox News Monday night. “Being black does not give you a license to call someone a racist.”

Waters, who represents Los Angeles, had characterized a comment from Dershowitz about special counsel Robert Mueller empaneling a grand jury in Washington, D.C. as racist. Dershowitz had said Mueller’s decision to call the jury in D.C. was strategic because the district was heavily Democratic and minority.

“What he is saying is ‘all of those black people are there and they don’t like Trump and so he’s not going to get a fair trial and so they should take it out of that jurisdiction,’” Waters said on MSNBC Friday night. “We will push back against that because that is absolutely racist.”

Waters has emerged as a major critic of the Trump administration, speaking out against its personnel and policies in bold fashion. She has been dubbed by some fans as “Auntie Maxine.”

Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter @DanielJSolomon

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.