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Of Course This Was What Cori Bush Was Tweeting About on the 4th of July

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  July 05, 2023 3:15 PM

Each 4th of July, we mark the occasion as our Independence Day, celebrating our nation's birthday and the success of this American experiment. Some mark the day, though, by spitting upon this country, including Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO). As our friends at Twitchy so aptly described the tweet, "America can always count on leftists doing their very best to rain on your Independence Day parade every July 4th. Never one to disappoint, Cori Bush, Congresswoman from Missouri, had her own ridiculous take today."

"The Declaration of Independence was written by enslavers and didn’t recognize Black people as human," she tweeted. "Today is a great day to demand Reparations Now," the tweet added. She also retweeted her own tweet so that it would show up near the top of her profile. 

The tweet has been thoroughly ratioed, with over 36,000 replies and close to 3,000 quote tweets. There are currently about 17,500 likes on the tweet. 

The Squad member has called for reparations before. As I covered at the time, Bush--along with other members of the Squad--used Juneteenth as an excuse to make such a demand. Back in 2021, President Joe Biden signed into law a bill that made Juneteenth into a federal holiday. On June 19, 1865, slaves in the Confederacy learned they had been freed over two years prior from the Emancipation Proclamation. It received unanimous support in the Senate and almost unanimous support in the House. Bush and her ilk had to politicize the holiday in such a way, though. 

More recently, Bush had called for $14 trillion in reparations during a press conference back in May. NPR had some quotes from the press conference at the time:

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"The United States has a moral and legal obligation to provide reparations for the enslavement of Africans and its lasting harm on the lives of millions of Black people," Bush said in a Wednesday news conference attended by Reps. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., as well as other stakeholders.

"America must provide reparations if we desire a prosperous future for all," Bush said.

...

"We know that we continue to live under slavery's vestiges. We know how slavery has perpetuated Jim Crow. We know how slavery's impacts live on today," Bush said, citing the racial wealth gap, voter suppression, infant mortality rates and other negative health outcomes for Black people.

"It's unjust and it wouldn't happen in a just and fair and equitable society," she said. "Those are not the natural consequences of human society."

"They are directly caused by our federal government's role in the enslavement and exploitation of Africans and Black people throughout our history."

An advanced Twitter search shows that Bush has tweeted about reparations over a dozen times, including on the 4th of July in previous years. 

Bush had also retweeted Ibram X. Kendi's tweet showing the faces of most of the signers of the Declaration of Independence blotted out to highlight that they owned slaves. Kendi, whose name is actually Ibram Henry Rogers, sees his claim to fame for his 2019 book on "How to Be an Antiracist."

As it turns out, the rendition, which was blotted out by Arlen Parsa, was fact-checked back in September 2019 by the Chicago Sun-Times to be "true" in that 34 of the 47 men in the famous painting depicting the Declaration of Independence owned slaves. However, this is despite how the fact-check outright admitted that "there is no one definitive source on this question."

"We contacted more than a dozen historians and historical organizations. None knew of a list that identified how many of the men in the painting were slaveholders," the fact-check also noted. 

Not so surprisingly, there were unfortunately no tweets from Bush's Twitter accounts commemorating the holiday in any kind of positive regard. 

Bush is lucky enough to be born in, live in, and be a member of Congress where she can denigrate this country that has given her and others so many opportunities, points that radio show host Wayne DuPree addressed in responding to Bush's tweet. 

Former Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC), who is currently running for president in the Republican primary, also made a point to mention that service members, like her husband, are protecting all Americans' freedoms in tweeting about Bush. This includes "this ungrateful congresswoman's right to hate on America."