Was Cori Bush Cured of COVID-19 by One of Her Fellow Faith Healers?

Before today, I didn’t know much about Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) except that, because she’s a black woman, anything I say to rebut or criticize her is automatically racist and sexist. For example, recently Rep. Bush referred to pregnant women as “birthing people” — apparently to avoid offending the 0.0001% of Americans who are or have been pregnant, but somehow identify as male — and all the people who slammed her for it were motivated only by her race and gender. And last week, when Bush stood on the floor of the House of Representatives and praised a Black Lives Matter activist who called for cops to be murdered, anybody who criticized her for it was a white supremacist. There’s no other possible explanation. That’s just how it works. (Please note that, as always, this rule does not apply to black and/or female Republicans. That’s different, because it just is.)

It’s with this in mind that I present the following news item from Alana Goodman at the Washington Free Beacon:

Rep. Cori Bush (D., Mo.) spent years working as a faith healer for a religious group that claims to have resurrected the dead and cured thousands of people suffering from AIDS, cancer, paralysis, and other serious maladies—including Bush’s own severe case of coronavirus last year.

Bush did not have medical insurance when she was hospitalized with the virus last April, and she said her struggle illustrated the necessity of passing Medicare for All. Officials at her faith-healing church, however, said she was cured within 30 minutes after talking to the head pastor, Charles Ndifon, by phone from her hospital bed.

“Cori, she had COVID, and she called me from the hospital,” Ndifon, the presiding apostle of Kingdom Embassy International churches told the Washington Free Beacon. “And 30 minutes later, she was breathing. Healed. It was that simple.”

Read the whole thing. I was particularly struck by Rep. Bush’s fellow Ndifon acolyte “Chris Chris,” who proclaimed: “We just murdered coronavirus, son!… I don’t care, bring people with AIDS. Bring the paralyzed people. The paralyzed people are gonna get healed and start breakdancing. The AIDS people, they’re gonna be able to donate blood.”

Science!

Now, this is America and you can believe whatever you want. If you genuinely believe the power of faith can cast out the demons that are causing your physical ailments, well, good luck with that. I saw through Ernest Angley (R.I.P.) the first time I saw him on TV when I was eight years old, but a lot of people believe in that stuff and they’re welcome to it.

And the believers might not be who you expect. For example, in a 2014 episode of Comedy Central’s Nathan for You, Nathan Fielder pranked a California real estate agent into agreeing to his scheme to sell “ghost-free houses,” and he got more than he bargained for when he hired an exorcist to cleanse one of the homes she was trying to sell:

You never know who’s going to believe things like this. It takes all kinds, that’s what I say.

But back to the point here: Cori Bush is a faith healer. There’s a faith healer in Congress. Possibly more than one, but Bush is the one we know about.

How did we not know this until today? Isn’t this newsworthy?

Can you imagine the media firestorm if a congressional Republican was a faith healer who claimed to have cured him- or herself of COVID-19? CNN, MSNBC, the NYT, and all the rest would present it as evidence that Republicans are a bunch of drooling redneck rubes. The guffaws from the #PartyOfScience would be deafening. The late-night comedians would show clips of convulsing Pentecostal snake-handlers and quip, “That GOP retreat looks like fun, huh?” I can just picture the smirk on Stephen Colbert’s face, although it’s impossible to picture him without it.

But because Cori Bush is a Democrat and a woman of color and a member of “The Squad,” this is what you’ll hear instead:

It’s good to be a Democrat!

P.S. To the smart alecks asking me why Rep. Bush didn’t just cure herself: Obviously, the evil demons that infected her with COVID-19 were also preventing her from using her faith-healing powers. Educate yourselves, people.