On Thursday’s broadcast of “CNN News Central,” Rep. Wesley Bell (D-MO) responded to the defeats of multiple Democratic incumbents in recent primaries in races where Israel was a key factor by saying that “some folks don’t quite understand that Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan are on the front lines of our sworn enemies. When we hear those chants coming from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran of death to Israel, it’s not death to Israel, period, it’s death to Israel, comma, death to America.”
Co-host John Berman asked, “We’ve seen three Democratic incumbents fall in Democratic primaries in the last two weeks. You saw it in New York City, and we just saw it in Colorado. And, in those races, support for Israel ended up being an important factor. Why do you think it has been an important factor in races around the country?”
Bell answered, “I think that a lot of folks — some folks don’t quite understand that Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan are on the front lines of our sworn enemies. When we hear those chants coming from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran of death to Israel, it’s not death to Israel, period, it’s death to Israel, comma, death to America. I’m old enough to remember 9/11. And I know the reason why the TSA is so strict is because we’re trying to ensure that those types of tragedies don’t happen again, and they’re coming from our sworn enemies. And so, we can make issues into political issues, but, at the end of the day, what we need to focus on is being reliable partners to our reliable partners and making certain that we’re standing with our allies.”
Bell continued, “But, also, we’ve got to focus on the issues that actually matter to Americans. The reason why I’m in this position is because I took out an incumbent at the time, and that individual was not focused on the issues of St. Louis and the issues of this region. But also working with the democracy, this is the same person that called Kamala Harris and Biden — and President Biden fascists right before the election. And so, we’ve got to keep in mind, if we want to fight Trump, fighting Trump is keeping Trump out of office in the first place and not helping his cause. And so, as Democrats, we’re going to — we’re focused on taking the House back, making Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) the speaker of the House so that we can reform the healthcare system, that we can work to bring costs down and work in the interests of regular, working-class folks.”
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