Anti-Semitic congresswoman and former faith healer Cori Bush (D., Mo.) became the second "Squad" member to lose reelection, falling to her pro-Israel primary challenger in a bitter race that saw her compare herself to Hamas terrorists.
Bush trailed St. Louis County prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell by 5 points with 84 percent of the vote reported when the Associated Press called the race just before 11 p.m. on Tuesday. Bell, a pro-Israel Democrat, criticized Bush for her hostility toward the Jewish state, particularly highlighting her 2021 vote against Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee also spent millions to oust Bush.
In response, Bush said she relates to Hamas, given that she and other anti-police activists were "considered terrorists" while protesting Michael Brown's death in 2014.
"Would they qualify to me as a terrorist organization? Yes. But do I know that? Absolutely not," Bush said of Hamas in the campaign's closing days. "I have no communication with them. All I know is that we were considered terrorists … and all we were doing was trying to get peace."
Bush's loss is a significant blow to the left-wing "Squad," which will lose at least two members come January following Rep. Jamaal Bowman's (D., N.Y.) June primary loss. It's also a blow to Bush's crackpot security team, which includes Bush's husband as well as Nathaniel Davis III, an anti-Semitic spiritual guru who claims he can summon tornadoes and earthquakes at will.
Bush has paid that team more than $812,000 on private security services since 2019, the Washington Free Beacon reported last month. Her husband, Cortney Merritts, received $150,000, while Davis—who claims to be 109 trillion years old and offers courses on "psychic self-defense"—has received $152,000.
Bush also claims a host of supernatural abilities.
She spent years working as a faith healer for the Kingdom Embassy International church, a religious group that claims to have resurrected the dead and cured AIDS, COVID-19, cancer, and paralysis. In her 2022 autobiography, Bush claimed she cured a woman's tumors and healed a young girl of paralysis.
Bush turned to the church to cure a 2020 bout with COVID, calling its head pastor, Charles Ndifon, from the hospital. Ndifon, who says illnesses are actually demonic forces that must be expelled from the body, told the Free Beacon he "healed" Bush over the phone in just 30 minutes.
The treatment, however, did not last. Years later, in 2023, Bush again contracted COVID. After an attack ad accused her of being an absentee lawmaker, she blamed the virus on her failure to make roughly 100 House votes.
"It wasn't my first bout of COVID, but, you know, it hits me hard, and I had instances when I couldn't physically get to the [House] floor," Bush said during a virtual town hall last week.