Rep. Cori Bush's Fourth of July tweet claiming America is free only for white people is full of ''hateful, divisive lies,'' Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Monday.
"The Left hates America. Believe them when they tell you this,'' Cruz tweeted, adding that former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick ''tried to spread the same lies on July 4'' in 2019.
Bush, a freshman Democratic lawmaker from Missouri and a member of the ''squad,'' tweeted: ''[W]hen they say that the 4th of July is about American freedom, remember this: the freedom they're referring to is for white people. This land is stolen land and Black people still aren't free.''
In a follow-up tweet, she said: "We know what our own freedom looks like. End the slavery permitted under the 13th amendment. End the War on Drugs. End police violence. End health care, housing, and education apartheid. WE are the experts on our own liberation. And we won't stop until it's won.''
Several progressives cheered Bush's comments, including congressional candidate Shahid Buttar.
In his own tweet, he wrote that it is "almost as if our entire country has been brainwashed to ignore our history —and how its worst elements continue today—despite our self-congratulatory rhetoric."
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., blasted Bush's tweet as racist.
"You can stop with the racism now Cori and put your race card back in your pocket. 4th of July is freedom for all from a tyrannical government. Happy Independence Day!'' she wrote.
Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla., called Bush's tweet ''outlandish'' and ''ridiculous.''
Podcast host Darrell B. Harrison, the dean of social media at Grace to You, slammed Bush as "an angry black woman—a very angry black woman" whose anger "is eating her alive from the inside out.
"I pity her because the ‘freedom' she seeks is not the freedom she needs," he said. "As such, freedom will continue to evade her as long as she carries that anger within her heart.''
Former Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson responded: ''[A]pparently history continues to escape black Democrats who have probably never heard of Crispus Attucks. But then, these are the same people that continue to be, and vote for, Democrats who marginalize, compartmentalize, and victimize minorities in this country then complain.''