Incoming Congresswoman Cori Bush, RN, was surprised when Republicans on Capitol Hill mistakenly referred to her as “Breonna Taylor.”
Bush said Republican lawmakers repeatedly addressed her as “Breonna Taylor” during her first day on the Hill when congressional lawmakers met their newly-elected colleagues for the first time.
She was surprised to learn that her fellow lawmakers didn’t know who Breonna Taylor was.
Taylor died in her Louisville home in March during a botched raid by three undercover police officers who were searching for a drug suspect.
Bush, who is Black, said she was hurt that some of her white colleagues in Congress had never heard of Breonna Taylor — despite violent protests that dominated the news cycle every day over the summer.
“To arrive at Congress to find out that several Republican colleagues do not know her name is not only shocking, but incredibly hurtful,” she said.
“I didn’t hear it once; I didn’t hear it twice, I heard it several times,” Bush told NBC News on Friday.
Bush, a registered nurse, pastor, and activist from St. Louis, Missouri, said lawmakers were confused by her black cloth mask printed with Taylor’s name in white letters.
But not everyone is buying that excuse.
“How can anyone mistake anyone who’s alive to the late Breonna Taylor,” asked Charlamagne tha god on the Breakfast Club morning show.
Bush defeated 20-year incumbent William Lacy Clay in the August Democratic primary. She built a name for herself as a Black Lives Matter activist during the 2014 Ferguson riots.
