OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
Missouri Rep. Cori Bush continued to make the case for why she needs security but police should be defunded and it did not sound any less elitist this time than it did the first time.
She appeared on the CNN show “State Of The Union” and spoke to host Dana Bash who asked her why she has private security but believes the police should be defunded on Sunday.
“I think what we have to look at is the fact that I made it to Congress in 2020, I was elected to Congress, and we are still fighting this same fight. We’re still fighting to save black lives. That was not – that work was not done before I got here,” she said in the interview.
“This is the reason why I ran, was to save lives, to save my son’s life,” she said as she did not answer the question with a straight answer.
She defended her previous comments, blamed Democrats for having a messaging issue and said inaction by Congress has cost people their lives.
“So, I don’t believe – as far as my – as far as my colleagues, I absolutely empathize. I empathize,” the Congresswoman said.
“But you know what? The same thing that the Republicans will do, which is figure out how to work with this on the comms spaces, that’s what we have to do,” she said.
She was asked if the Democrat Party had a messaging issue, to which she said “no,” but her answer appeared to indicate otherwise.
“No, I’m saying that we can also – that that’s another way that you can tackle this,” the Congresswoman said.
“You have to tackle it from more than one place. We have to work on what we want to say, what is our message, but then we also have to understand that we have to save lives too,” she said. “I’m here to stand up for my community.”
And she did not walk back her previous comments to CBS News on her mission to defund the police, which does not mean taking all of the funding from police, but reducing police budgets and funding and diverting those funds to community programs.
“My job is to save lives, the lives of my community, because, when we’re – when we’re talking about every single year increasing the budget for police, and then the budget for, like, Health and Human Services continuing to shrink, and St. Louis being number one for police violence year after year after year, number one, number two for homicides year and year, after year,” she said.
“So, when we’re adding more money to the police, but we’re still dying,” she said, but then did not finish her thought.
She insinuated that people within the Democrat Party want to blame her for issues that existed before she got to Congress.
“That was not fixed before I got here, to then come at me and say you’re the reason why we have these problems, no, the reason why we have these problems is because those that were in power and could have fixed this problem before now didn’t and cost – it cost lives,” she said.
“And so now that I’m here, I – we just introduced the People’s Response Act to make sure that we are looking at the money that should be going to social safety nets to make sure that our community members who are living with mental health issues are able to function and live in society…the way that anyone would ask to,” she said.
