OAN Staff Brooke Mallory
5:24 PM – Thursday, August 8, 2024
Missouri Democrat Rep. Cori Bush threatened to take revenge on a leading pro-Israel lobbying group for supporting her opponent’s successful attempt to defeat her in the primary. However, the White House denounced Bush’s “inflammatory” remarks on Wednesday.
“As much as I love my job, all they did was radicalize me, and now they should be afraid,” Bush said in a speech on Tuesday night after losing the primary to St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell. “They’re about to see this other Cori, this other side… And let me say this: AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down!”
Bell’s campaign received significant funding from the United Democracy Project, a super PAC connected to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), during the expensive and intense primary campaign that was partly focused on Bush’s criticism of Israel.
In recent months, Bush has become one of the most outspoken opponents of AIPAC and Israel. Just over two weeks after Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7th, the “squad” member referred to the current Israel-Hamas conflict as “Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign.”
When asked what President Joe Biden thought of Bush’s angry vow to take on AIPAC, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded that the president detests such “inflammatory” and “divisive” language.
“Look, the president has always been very clear—and very recently, after the assassination attempt of the last president—about lowering rhetoric, right? Lowering political rhetoric and the importance of doing that,” Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday at a press briefing. “It is important—important that we be very mindful of what we say. This kind of rhetoric is inflammatory and divisive and incredibly unhelpful.”
“We’re going to continue to condemn any type of political rhetoric in that way, in that vein,” she continued. “And so, it is important to be mindful in what we say and how we say it. But we cannot have this type of inflammatory, divisive language in our political discourse.”
In a race that mostly revolved around the Israel-Hamas conflict, she is the second member of the “squad” to lose their primary this cycle. In his primary reelection campaign, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who has similarly been vocal about his criticism of Israel in recent months, recently lost his bid as well.
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