The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has openly vowed to pour $100 million into campaigns to defeat progressive representatives like Cori Bush who have spoken out against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. As Chris McGreal writes in The Guardian, “after it played a leading role in unseating New York congressman Jamaal Bowman, another progressive Democrat who criticised the scale of Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza… AIPAC pumped $8.5m into the race in Missouri’s first congressional district to support [Wesley] Bell through its campaign funding arm, the United Democracy Project (UDP), after Bush angered some pro-Israel groups as one of the first members of Congress to call for a ceasefire after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel.” After Bush was unseated in August, she vowed to keep fighting for justice, and she put AIPAC on notice: “AIPAC,” she told supporters, “I’m coming to tear your kingdom down.”
At the 2025 National Membership Meeting of Jewish Voice for Peace in Baltimore, TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez sits down with the former Congresswoman and key member of “The Squad” to discuss her re-election loss, the undue influence of organizations like AIPAC on our democracy, and Bush’s plan for fighting back.
Studio Production: Kayla Rivara, Rosette Sewali
Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
We’re here at the Jewish Voice for Peace National Membership Meeting held in downtown Baltimore, and I am honored to be sitting here with Congresswoman Cori Bush, who just gave an incredible speech at the closing plenary.
Congresswoman, thank you so much for joining me. I know we only have a limited time here, and I wanted to just sort of ask, first and foremost, for our viewers out there who saw your re-election campaign be awarded by $8.5 million from AIPAC, amidst other things, what would you say to folks out there who just see the results of that election and think, oh, well, she lost fair in square. What’s really going on underneath that?
Cori Bush:
Well, thank you for the question. First of all, there was no fair. There was no square. There was deceit, manipulation, lies, misinformation, racism, bigotry, hatred, vitriol, and it was all okay. There was nothing that was off limits as long as AIPAC got the result that they wanted. They didn’t care about how it ripped apart our community, how all of the years of organizing, so much of it was just disrupted and some of those bonds that people created, it just completely shattered. They didn’t care about that. They don’t care about that. They don’t care that I’m the same person that some of those folks marched with out on the streets of Ferguson during the uprising in 2014 and 2015.
They don’t care that I am the one who protested the ending of the eviction moratorium in 2021 as a freshman out on the steps of the US Capitol to make sure that 11 million people weren’t about to be evicted from their homes when the government could have done something about it. They didn’t care about that. They wanted to discredit me because in discrediting someone that the people trust, then it pulls power not only from that person that they trust, but it pulls power from the people. So there over $8 million that they put in, plus those that they were working with, it roughly ended up being around $15 million, between 15 to $20 million, which is the numbers that we’ve seen. And I just want to make this point. To use racism against me, to distort my face on mailers to make me look like an animal, to use lies about my family or me. The thing is this, if you’re doing the right thing and you’re doing it for the right reason, why can’t you just use truth?
I have no problem with people running against each other. We’re able to do that. That’s how I won my race. I ran against someone I thought was ineffective. I felt like I could do more. I spoke about what I would do and how I felt I could do it. I spoke about my past and who I wanted to be as a member of Congress. The people believed it because the people saw me as that person, and I won around $1.4 million. It took me that much money to unseat a 20-year incumbent whose parent, whose father was in the seat for 32 years. So 52 years worth of a machine. I spent around $1.4 million to unseat. I won that race with over 4,700 votes. AIPAC and the groups that they were working with, they spent around 15 million. The person only won by less than 7,000 votes.
So it took basically 15 million … I mean, 15 times the amount of money to unseat me that it took me to unseat someone who had a 52-year family legacy. So that was the depth of the deceit that they had to use. And I’ll say this, never once did they say anything about Israel or Palestine. Never once did they use that in ads. Now in front of people, they would call me anti-Semitic. People would say, well, what did she do? Oh, well, [inaudible 00:04:41]. I have anything to show you. But what they would use in the ads was, oh, she’s mean to Joe Biden. She wants kids to drink contaminated water from lead pipes. Those were the things that they used against me. And because it flooded the media, our local media so heavily because of the amount of money, because you will see four or five ads from my opponent and then only one ad from me, the people started to believe and they were wondering, well, why does he have so much money? Well, why does it?
So that’s what it looked like, and that’s how they were able to deceive the community to make them think, oh, well, then maybe something is going on that we don’t understand. And then they also made people feel like, well, I’m confused, so maybe I’ll just stay home.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And I want to ask another follow-up question on that because of course, you and other members of the squad are representative of a grassroots hope coming from a lot of the folks that we talk to and interview on a weekly basis. This is a hope over the past 10 years that there was still a possibility of making progressive change through electoral politics.
What would you say to folks right now who are feeling despondent and after seeing AIPAC still amidst all of that unseat, you unseat Jamal Bowman, the richest man in the world buying his way into our government right now? what would you say to folks who feel like we don’t have enough to take on their money?
Cori Bush:
Well, that’s what they want us to believe. They want us to fall into this place of just feeling overwhelmed, just believing the chaos. They want us to stop fighting. They want us to think that … Well, they want us to just live in this place of fatigue. That’s why they keep ramming this train our way. But we can’t allow that to happen because what they understand is it’s actually the people who have the power. That’s why they have to do so much and push so hard and spend so much money because they understand is that it’s really us who has the power. We just have to acknowledge it and understand it and figure out how to properly use our power to fight against this. And so yes, I was unseated Jamal Bowman was unseated, and I know that we know that they’re coming from more in 2026 and beyond.
But the thing is, the movement is never one person or never a few people. Yes, we were working for more progressive change, and that’s an issue right now. But the other part of that is we need our actual elected officials who claim to be progressive, to actually be that. We need them or stop saying that you are, because then you’re making people feel this way because they’re looking like, oh, these are our people, but what’s going on? Why aren’t they pushing? Why aren’t they fighting for this change? So we need people to be your authentic self in this moment because the people are falling away from the Democratic Party because they feel the hypocrisy. People are saying, I don’t understand why you’re not fighting hard enough. You said this man is a fascist. He’s a racist, he’s a white supremacist. He’s authoritarian, he’s a dictator. He’s all of these things. But you’re not meeting the moment. You’re not meeting the threat with the proper opposition to it.
But when they also see that some of these same folks who are supposed to be our “leaders” take money from groups like AIPAC who are primarily funded by Republicans who also endorse insurrectionist members of Congress or people who supported insurrectionists, at least we feel, then the people are like, well, why should I believe and trust in you? Also, if you are cool with allowing a genocide to happen on our watch in our lifetime with our tax dollars, if you are okay with that, then what is your red line? Because apparently, death and destruction of thousands of people, it’s not. So who are you? Is this the party of human rights and civil rights? Is this the party of equality and equity and peace? Is this that party? It is absolutely not if there is no no real opposition to what we’re seeing right now.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And just a final question. When you lost your reelection and you gave this rousing kind of speech that you sort of brought back into your speech today, you told AIPAC, “I’m coming to tear down your kingdom.” I wanted to ask, just in closing here with the last minute, I’ve got you. What does that mean? What does that look like? And for folks out there watching who want to see that, who want this undue money and influence out of our politics, what is it going to take to tear down that kingdom?
Cori Bush:
So one thing I won’t do is give all the secrets away. So I can’t give all of the … but what I will say is part of it is this, part of it is being here with the people. So Jewish Voice for Peace has 100% been a supporter of mine. And this didn’t just start after October 7th. We’ve been working with folks with JVP for years. This is not anything new, and we’ll continue to do that work. But the fact that they continue to organize … other groups are organizing and calling out the name “AIPAC.” There are experts working on why there is this loophole that allows for AIPAC to do some of the lobbying they do. There is a lot happening behind the scenes, and I’m going to continue to do that work. But the stuff that is more forward-facing, I’m going to continue to organize.
I’m going to continue to make sure that people know. The PAC United Democracy Project is … We need people to understand the connection between them and AIPAC. So that’s where the money is going to flow from. It’s going to flow from UDP. We need people to know DMFI and know some of these other names, but we also need people to know that in your local community, there are PACs being formed that are basically a smaller AIPAC. And their whole purpose is to try to make people to be kind of ambiguous. And so you won’t know that this is who they are. It is just like, oh, it’s this group that has all of this money that’s coming against this elected official that’s speaking out against the genocide. But they have all of this money, and so it’s like maybe they’re good. We want people to know. So educating people around the country as well.
I’m not going to stop fighting because AIPAC came for me. The thing is this: AIPAC didn’t make me, so AIPAC can’t break me. AIPAC didn’t position me so they can deposition me. The thing is, I got there because the people put me there, but I was there for a purpose and a mission. So that’s the other part. So I knew while I was there in Congress that I was on a timer. I knew that I was only there for a purpose, for a mission. I knew that there was this urgency on the inside of me. One thing that I would say to people all the time is I felt this weeping. I just only inside of me, I just always felt like crying. It never stopped 24 hours a day. And it’s the thing that kept me moving fast. Like, okay, I got to do this. I got to do that.
People in Congress will say, “She’s championed all of these different areas. Why is she doing so much?” That was why I didn’t know that I would only be there four years, but I needed to get the work done, and I needed to be true to what I said, who I said I would be. But also, I needed to be what I needed. That’s what I had to be what I needed when I was unhoused, when I was hungry, when I was abused, and all of the things. I needed that. I needed what my grandmother needed when she taught me that you never look a white woman in her face because of what she went through the experience in Mississippi growing up and my ancestors before her through chattel slavery. I needed to be what they needed. And I’ll never stop doing that because the thing is, it’s not about me, it’s what is who God created me to be. And that’s just everything for me. And so I’m not afraid.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.