Rep. Cori Bush spent years working as a faith healer for a religious group that claimed to have cured the Missouri Democrat's 2020 COVID case over the phone. That didn't stop Bush from blaming the roughly 100 House votes she missed last year on the virus.
During a virtual town hall held last week, Bush was pressed on a television ad from a group supporting her primary opponent, Wesley Bell, that dings her for missing "more votes than almost anyone in Congress." Bush dismissed the criticism as "absolutely ridiculous," blaming her inability to make votes on a debilitating bout with COVID, a video of the town hall obtained by the Washington Free Beacon shows.
"It's so absolutely ridiculous. So, this past year, you all, I got COVID, and, you know, I'm an asthmatic," Bush said. "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." She went on to argue that the votes she missed were inconsequential amendments.
"What the attack ads aren't telling you is that I did make it to the final vote of passage," Bush continued. "I literally dragged myself to the floor to vote, and not only did I do that, I had the assistance of staff from our whip's office, who at points were actually holding up my arms, trying to help me walk, because I was so weak, but I was showing up to vote."
It's unclear why Bush, who said she missed two days of votes while fighting the virus, did not turn to her faith-healing group to rectify the situation more quickly. During a 2020 bout with COVID, Bush called her faith-healing church, Kingdom Embassy International, and was cured within 30 minutes, according to the church's presiding apostle, Charles Ndifon.
"Cori, she had COVID, and she called me from the hospital," Ndifon told the Washington Free Beacon in 2021. "And 30 minutes later, she was breathing. Healed. It was that simple."
Another church member, "Chris Chris," posted a Facebook video on April 7, 2020, recounting the incident. After Bush called the church's Rhode Island headquarters, known as "The Embassy," she "got healed of coronavirus over the phone," Chris said. He went on to say the church "murdered coronavirus."
"My apostle [Ndifon] is just decreeing, delivering, all that good stuff, you know, in the name of Jesus. And guess what? Guess what? [Bush] got healed from coronavirus right now, about maybe 30 minutes ago," Chris said. "We just murdered coronavirus, son! We just murdered it! We just murdered coronavirus! I don't care, yo, bring people with AIDS. Bring the paralyzed people. The paralyzed people are gonna get, gonna get healed and start breakdancing. OK? The AIDS people, they're gonna be able to donate blood."
Bush, who did not respond to a request for comment, founded and served as pastor at the King Embassy International's St. Louis chapter from 2011 to 2014. Her poor voting record has come back to haunt her in her difficult primary election against St. Louis prosecuting attorney Wesley Bell (D.), which will take place Tuesday.
In total, Bush has missed 241 votes (11.4 percent) since she was sworn into Congress—far worse than the median 2.1 percent among the lifetime records of current representatives. The 107 votes she missed around her September 2023 infection don't even account for half of those.
Kingdom Embassy International claims to have performed other miracles, such as resurrecting the dead and curing thousands of people suffering from cancer, deafness, and blindness. Bush herself also claims supernatural abilities.
In her 2022 autobiography, Bush said she cured a woman's tumors after she "laid hands on her and prayed." In another instance, she said she healed a young girl who couldn't walk by holding her and saying, "You will walk."
Ndifon said he first trained Bush to become a faith healer after she started attending his events in St. Louis in 2011. She opened the St. Louis chapter of Kingdom Embassy International church and served as its pastor until 2014.
"She continued having meetings even when I left St. Louis. She continued healing the sick, she would send the reports," Ndifon said. "Once in a while, cases they can't handle, they would send to me."
According to Ndifon's teachings, illnesses are the result of demonic forces that must be expelled from the body.
A bodyguard on Bush's payroll, Nathaniel Davis III, also claims that he is 109 trillion years old, can summon tornadoes, can cause earthquakes with his hate, and conducts blood rituals to bring ruin upon his enemies. Davis, a former member of the vehemently anti-Semitic New Black Panther Party who also goes under the name "Aha Sen Piankhy," also spreads anti-Semitic conspiracy theories online, including the belief that the Rothschild family "runs the Western Hemisphere" and unleashed the COVID-19 pandemic to murder 99 percent of the human population.