Jamaal Bowman Has It In for Jamaal Bowman

What a year this week has been for Representative Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.). 

First, the New York congressman pulled a fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building just before the House began voting on a spending bill averting a government shutdown. The building was evacuated, delaying the vote. The congressman, who is now under investigation by the U.S. Capitol Police and the House Administration Committee, “did not realize he would trigger a building alarm as he was rushing to make an urgent vote” and that he “regrets any confusion,” his office said.

After observers rightly wondered how that could possibly be so, Bowman himself released a statement on X (formerly Twitter):

As National Review’s Jeff Blehar wrote earlier today, the Squad member’s explanation defies credulity:

Bowman is now attempting to claim he pulled the alarm “mistakenly.” I refuse to rehearse and serially demolish his nonsensical defense because I am tired of being condescended to. The question of whether Jamaal Bowman, a multi-term veteran of Capitol Hill as well as a literate adult in full possession of his mental and physical faculties, intentionally pulled a fire alarm clearly marked “FIRE ALARM” is a misdirection that Bowman and his defenders would prefer you to waste your time litigating. There is no point in doing so. He did it on purpose. You do not do this by accident; there is no possible way for a former school principal whose entire daily life at work was organized around fire-alarm usage and safety to be that “checked out” (unless they are suffering from dementia, in which case they should retire immediately). This is the stupidest kind of gaslighting imaginable.

But even if, somehow, Bowman did not understand that pulling a fire alarm would cause a fire alarm to go off, his week could’ve ended there. He could’ve kept his head down, hoping that his idiocy plea would carry him through, and gotten to the work for which he was elected to Congress.

Instead, he and his team decided to provide us a little more levity during this frenzied moment in our politics. In a memo that Bowman’s office sent to congressional Democrats imploring them to support their beleaguered colleague, the representative’s staff suggested certain talking points. Among them include predictable Democratic lines such as “it’s clear my colleague Congressman Bowman was simply rushing to the floor to cast his vote to prevent a shutdown and support working class families,” and “House Republicans are obviously trying to distract from the fact they cannot govern and that they nearly shut down the federal government for no reason.” 

All well and good, if disingenuous. But they also snuck this little gem in there: “I believe Congressman Bowman when he says this was an accident. Republicans need to instead focus their energy on the Nazi members of their party before anything else.”

Out of the frying pan, into the fire/when it rains, it pours/kicking himself while he’s down, etc.

In yet another clarifying statement, Bowman posted on X that he was unaware and did not approve of the language in the memo:

If it’s true that his staff “used the term Nazi without [his] consent,” maybe it’s also true that he really didn’t understand what pulling a fire alarm would do. Either way, it’s been a rough few days for Bowman, and as the late, great Jimmy Buffet would say, it’s his own damn fault.