Don’t underestimate Maxine Waters. Then again, don’t dwell too long on her logic.

The longtime Democratic congresswoman from Los Angeles and frequent critic of President Donald Trump took to the House floor on Thursday to hammer Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Butler, as Kelly was praising Trump’s domestic policy successes.

The dust-up began ahead of a vote to repeal Obama-era legislation that protects consumers from discrimination by automobile dealers. Defending the legislation, Waters cited a study that she said has shown discrimination against people of color in the auto industry in their car-loan process. Waters said the study should have included women, too, because “they think women are stupid, don’t know how to negotiate a loan, and women have been taken advantage of too.”

Kelly interrupted Waters, saying: “We’re trying to make America great every day and every way and the best way to do that is to stop talking about discrimination and start talking about the nation. We’re coming together as a people in spite of what you say.”

Waters said this in reply: “I am more offended as an African-American woman than you will ever be. And this business about making America great again, it is your president that’s dividing this country and don’t talk to me about the fact that we don’t understand.... No, I will not yield, no I will not yield. Don’t tell me we don’t understand, that’s the attitude given toward women time and time again.”

Kelly owns an auto dealership and has done business with countless area residents, male and female, of all ethnic strains. He has some expertise in the automotive trade and — if his continued presence in Congress is any determination — he has some level of public trust and integrity in his profession.

“We’re talking about thousands and thousands of auto dealers and millions of people who work in the industry, and making a broad statement that these are people who discriminate against non-white buyers,” Kelly said this past weekend on FOX Business with Neil Cavuto. “This is absolutely preposterous.”

We agree. The automotive credit process is based on the individual’s credit history and credit ratings, not skin color or gender.

Now, if Waters wants to argue a correlation between poor credit ratings and race, gender or any other physical attribute, she might have to take into account the Democratic human services policies that have been shown to sustain poverty since the 1960s. It would only underscore the fact that black unemployment under the Trump administration has fallen to its lowest levels since at least 1970 — as Trump promised it would when he was campaigning in 2016.

For the sake of filtering out the fake news, let’s try to be discriminating without being discriminatory.

Discriminating — as in, let’s admit not everybody qualifies financially to own Cadillacs. Credit applications help identify individuals who can and can’t afford them.

As apposed to discriminatory — as in, certain groups of people should not even bother filling out the application.

The people of Pennsylvania’s 3rd District (tomorrow we officially become the 16th) consider ourselves discriminating.

We understand how car loans work.

And we recognize malarkey when we hear it.

What Waters refuses to yield is the possibility that Trump’s domestic policies might be bearing fruit, particularly for minorities.