White House denounces Cori Bush’s ‘inflammatory’ words to AIPAC after primary loss

The White House condemned Rep. Cori Bush’s (D-Mo.) “inflammatory” rhetoric Wednesday, after she vowed to retaliate against a top pro-Israel lobbying group for backing her challenger’s successful effort to unseat her in the primary race.

“As much as I love my job, all they did was radicalize me, and now they should be afraid,” Bush said in a speech Tuesday night after she lost the Democratic primary to St. Louis County Prosecutor Wesley Bell.

“They’re about to see this other Cori, this other side,” she said, adding, “And let me say this: AIPAC, I’m coming to tear your kingdom down!”

The United Democracy Project, a super PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), was a top funder of Bell’s campaign in what became a very expensive and heavily contentious primary battle that centered, in part, on her views against Israel and the war in Gaza.

Bush has been among the most vocal critics of Israel and AIPAC in recent months. The “squad” member has called the ongoing Israel-Hamas war “Israel’s ethnic cleansing campaign,” and introduced a resolution calling for de-escalation and a cease-fire just more than two weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Asked for President Biden’s thoughts on Bush’s vow to challenge AIPAC, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president condemns that kind of “divisive” and “inflammatory” rhetoric.

“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 Wednesday at the daily 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.”

Bush’s primary defeat Tuesday comes four years after she unseated an established moderate Democrat, former Rep. Lacy Clay, who had represented the district for two decades.

She is the second “squad” member to lose their primary this cycle in a race that centered, in part, on the Israel-Hamas war. Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), who has also been outspoken against Israel in recent months, was also unseated in his primary reelection bid.