HOT TAKES: Cori Bush Unwittingly Hands GOP a Gift With Her Take on Columbus Police Shooting

We’ve reported throughout the day on some seriously bad, and in some cases dangerous hot takes expressed by the media and the left on the officer-involved shooting death of Ma’Khia Bryant.

But some of the worst ones have come directly from prominent Democrats in positions of power, including President Biden and White House press secretary Jen Psaki, both of who had zero to say today about some of the key known facts about the shooting — including the fact that Bryant was seen in the bodycam video with a knife in her hand preparing to lunge at her intended victim.

Another example of a hot take gone badly wrong came from Cori Bush, a first-term Congresswoman from Missouri. Bush, a radical left-wing activist who proudly boasted in January about being a member of AOC’s “Squad,” declared that Bryant was “a 16-year-old baby” who was “shot and killed by police yesterday.” Insinuating “justice” wasn’t served when the Columbus, Ohio police officer shot and killed Bryant, Bush stated that “convictions [like Derek Chauvin’s] don’t end violent policing”:

Ma’Khia Bryant was a 16-year-old baby. She was shot and killed by police yesterday.

This is why no single verdict can deliver justice. Convictions don’t save lives. Convictions don’t end violent policing.

Stop killing us and our babies. Stop.

— Cori Bush (@CoriBush) April 21, 2021

Statements like the White House’s and Bush’s will have the unintended effect of becoming pretty powerful gifts to Republicans in advance of the 2022 elections, for reasons explained below by conservative radio talk show host Dana Loesch:

That 16 year-old baby was trying to stab another person to death. I guess the life of the baby she was trying to stab doesn’t matter. https://t.co/tIIZ94HMKE

— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) April 21, 2021

Think about it. The various arguments being made by leftists in the aftermath of yesterday’s shooting appear to boil down to suggesting that Bryant and the girl she is seen moving towards be allowed to “stab it out” because “it’s what teenagers do” (except in all the instances where they don’t). If that scenario would have played out, the girl in the pink seen in the video likely would have been seriously injured or died.

Would letting that tense situation continue uninterrupted with the girl in pink on the receiving end of a knife equate to “justice” in Cori Bush’s eyes? It almost seems as though Bush and other Democrats believe Bryant’s life mattered more than that of the girl who she was trying to stab.

This is the corner Democrats have boxed themselves into. In some prior officer-involved shootings, defund the police proponents have always been quick to point out that the person shot and killed was “unarmed” and thus should not have been shot (despite the fact that “unarmed” does not always = “not a threat”). In the Bryant case, you had a teenager who was clearly armed and holding up the knife (which is a lethal weapon) as she moved towards another teenager seen in the video.

The left can’t have it both ways here, though they’ll still try to for political purposes. Either the police are justified in shooting an armed person who is directly threatening others (or them) with imminent bodily harm or they’re not.

Watching Democrats (House Dems especially) twist themselves into pretzels for the next year and a half on this is going to prove very interesting — and illuminating — to a lot of people, and could end up hurting them at the ballot box just as their support for defunding the police did last year.

As always, stay tuned.