In a humiliating moment, Maxine Waters stumbled over her words to an extreme degree, botching a basic statement and leading conservatives to react uproariously online after the 86-year-old congresswoman called The Wall Street Journal “The Hall Street Journal.”

For context, in a House Financial Services Committee Hearing on May 7, 2025, Rep Waters (D-CA) started reading her prepared remarks and quickly began fumbling, tripping over her words multiple times while sounding entirely incoherent, leading up to a now-viral moment where the aging politician called The Wall Street Journal “The Hall Street Journal.”

During her statement, Waters attempted to portray the Trump Administration’s impact on the economy in a negative light, saying, “In the first quarter since Trump took office, the United States economy shrank, with our gross des…domestic project…product…decreasing by 0.3 percent.” Clearly having trouble getting the words out, she added, “We are falling behind while Canada, Europe, and China are racing ahead.”

In the written version of Rep. Waters’ prepared statement, which was published by the Democrats’ U.S. Committee on Financial Services page, the congresswoman wrote, “Mr. Bessent, you are also the face of what the Wall Street Journal has described as ‘the dumbest trade war in history.’ As a result of this stupidity, U.S. stock markets have experienced the worst first 100 days of any presidential term in more than fifty years.”