(CNN) Rep. Maxine Waters pushed back against President Donald Trump on Monday, saying she wasn't calling for people to "harm" his supporters, as he tweeted earlier in the day, but to publicly protest his Cabinet members. 
 
 "I believe in peaceful, very peaceful protests," she told reporters on Capitol Hill. "I have not called for the harm of anybody. This President has lied again when he's saying that I've called for harm." 
 
 The Democratic congresswoman from California returned to Washington on Monday amid a heated debate over her comments from the weekend, when she encouraged people to keep pushing back on members of Trump's administration in public spaces, like restaurants, department stores and gas stations. 
 
 Her comments, fueled by frustration over migrant families separated at the border, came at the end of a week when Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was heckled by activists at a restaurant in Washington, DC, and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant in Virginia 
 
 "Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party. She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max!" Trump tweeted earlier on Monday 
 
 Waters' remarks prompted criticism from Democratic leaders Monday, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who tweeted an article about Waters and wrote that Trump's "daily lack of civility has provoked responses that are predictable but unacceptable." 
 
 "As we go forward, we must conduct elections in a way that achieves unity from sea to shining sea," Pelosi's tweet said. 
 
 Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, in a speech on the Senate floor, said, "I strongly disagree with those who advocate harassing folks if they don't agree with you." 
 
 "If you disagree with a politician, organize your fellow citizens to action and vote them out of office," he added. "But no one should call for the harassment of political opponents. That's not right. That's not American." 
 
 Waters, however, rejected the notion that Democrats have been critical of her comments. "They have not been," she flatly told reporters when asked about the criticism. 
 
 "Don't put this on Nancy Pelosi," she continued. "Don't put this on anybody. Put it on Trump. Trump is the one who's creating lies, trying to have people believe that I talked about harming people. There is nowhere in my statement -- any time, any place -- that I talked about harm." 
 
 Rather, she argued, "our members of the Democratic caucus are talking about civility." 
 
 "But protest is civility," she added. "Protest is about peaceful resistance to the kind of actions that we are experiencing." 
 
 Pressed on whether she supported the idea of kicking someone like Sanders out of a restaurant, Waters said she supports "their right to protest." 
 
 "I have nothing to do with the way people decide to protest," she said. "I have no way of telling people how to protest, what they should protest. Again, it started with the restauranteur, it started with people in a restaurant. I did not create that, I did not design that, but I support their right to protest." 
 
 Waters described the attention around her comments as a distraction designed by the President. "Let's not get diverted as the president is capable of doing, of diverting us from the real issue. This issue is not Maxine Waters. This issue is the children." 
 
 She predicted the protests would stop when families were swiftly reunited at the border. 
 
 "I stand by my speech in saying that the protests have already started, they're probably going to continue, but the way to deal with all of this is simply to come up with a credible plan." 
 
 The President signed an executive order last week aimed at keeping families together after outrage over his administration's new policy of referring all adults caught crossing the border illegally for prosecution -- a decision that resulted in more 2,500 children being separated from their parents while the adults were detained. ||||| The Congressional intern who hollered “Mr. President, f--- you!” across the Capitol Rotunda last week during a presidential visit has been identified. 
 
 Sources tell Fox News the woman in question is 21-year-old Caitlin Marriott, who is interning in the office of Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H. 
 
 Fox News is told she has not been terminated and will continue to work there through August. 
 
 Congressional authorities were finally able to identifiy Marriott and speak with her to determine if she posed a threat to the president, sources said. She raced from where she heckled Trump, forcing U.S. Capitol Police to put out a “be on the lookout” over their radios. 
 
 After deciding Marriott didn’t pose a threat to President Trump, authorities decided there was no other action they could take. However, Fox News was told that Marriott will be confined to her duties in Hassan’s office on the third floor of the Hart Senate office building and earned a week-long suspension. 
 
 Before Trump’s visit to the Capitol last Tuesday, a gaggle of interns gathered on the Senate side of the Capitol Rotunda behind a line of Capitol Police officers and Secret Service agents. When the president arrived, Marriott shouted the epithet as Trump walked into the office of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis. 
 
 Fox News is told that Marriott's decision to hector President Trump was “impulsive.” The interns were bantering back and forth about potentially shouting something at the president, and fellow interns “egged on” Marriott and others to do something. 
 
 “We are aware of the situation and have taken disciplinary action, including a one-week suspension and revoking her Congressional intern ID badge (thereby restricting her access to the Capitol), in response to her breach of office policies regarding respectful and appropriate conduct. We also facilitated contact with Capitol Police,” Hassan's spokesman, Aaron Jacobs, said. 
 
 ||||| LISTEN: As Pres Trump’s entourage entered Speaker Ryan’s office in the Capitol, someone on the other side of the Capitol rotunda yelled: “Mr. President, F—k you!!” (He entered about 15 seconds later):pic.twitter.com/KHp16LYMoF
– A Democratic senator's intern has been suspended over two words that matter as much as their target. Caitlin Marriott was heard on video yelling, "Mr. President, f--- you!" in the rotunda of the US Capitol on June 19, seconds before President Trump passed by en route to a meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan, per USA Today. Though Fox News reports the 21-year-old's "impulsive" act came after she was "egged on" by fellow interns, "we suspended her for a week, and we took away the badge that allows her to travel freely in the Capitol complex, which means that she will be highly restricted for the remainder of her internship," New Hampshire Sen. Maggie Hassan tells the Washington Post. Per Fox, Marriott will work in Hassan's office through August after authorities found she didn't pose a threat to Trump. In a Tuesday statement, Hassan says Marriott's comment "violated the standards of our office about appropriate conduct." But "this behavior shouldn't be equated with the president's destructive and divisive actions, like ripping health-care away from people." She adds Marriott "immediately accepted responsibility for her actions and is facing consequences for them. The president is doing neither." A day earlier, Trump had tweeted an attack on Rep. Maxine Waters over her encouraging voters to push back against members of the Trump administration in public. "I strongly disagree with those who advocate harassing folks if they don't agree with you," Minority Leader Chuck Schumer added on the Senate floor Tuesday, per CNN. "If you disagree with a politician, organize your fellow citizens to action and vote them out of office."