“The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg is coming out with an interesting defense of Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and his act of pulling a fire alarm in a Capitol office building.
On Monday, Goldberg defended the congressman as she said, “It is quite possible that he was trying to get [to the House floor]… You know, if you’re not looking because it’s a door that’s normally open, you just go and you press a button.”
She also suggested she could not weigh in on what the button looked like and argued it may not have been clear it was a fire alarm because, “You have to break glass to get to the button.”
As a picture was displayed showing the fire alarm without a glass enclosure, Goldberg insisted, “I don’t know, it just looks like a button. I can’t see the button.”
Watch the video below:
CONSPIRACY THEORY TIME: Whoopi says the "point" is that the door was closed to prevent Bowman from reading the CR and stop him from voting:
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) October 2, 2023
"I would have pressed whatever I had to press to get the door open because I know you would expect me not to be there to vote." pic.twitter.com/Pv7lfpZ4j8
Over the weekend, Bowman was seen on video pulling a fire alarm at an office building near the U.S. Capitol, sparking allegations he did so to delay a vote on a spending bill to keep the government funded.
In a statement, he said, “Today, as I was rushing to make a vote, I came to a door that is usually open for votes but today would not open. I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door. I regret this and sincerely apologize for any confusion this caused.”
“But I want to be very clear, this was not me, in any way, trying to delay any vote. It was the exact opposite — I was trying urgently to get to a vote, which I ultimately did and joined my colleagues in a bipartisan effort to keep our government open,” he added.
Now, let’s just get this out of the way: People who want to compare this incident to Jan. 6 are just deeply unserious and dishonest. There is no comparison between allegedly pulling a dumb stunt to delay a vote and violently breaking into the Capitol to throw out the votes of millions of Americans.
And Republican lawmakers would do well to ignore those comparisons. All they have to look at is the spectacular disaster in Tennessee where conservative commentators compared a protest at the statehouse to Jan. 6, which then led Republicans to expel two Democratic lawmakers and subsequently turn them into heroes for the Left.
Still, Bowman’s excuse is pretty lame, especially given the fact that he was a school principal before running for Congress. Are we to believe he really does not know what a fire alarm looks like or what happens if someone pulls it?
Pictures of the door Bowman was trying to open that were displayed on “The View” show it is clearly marked as an emergency exit, and has warnings that an alarm will sound if opened. Meanwhile, the fire alarm was clearly marked as, in fact, a fire alarm — not some random button to push to open the door.
Either it was a stunt, or Bowman has a tendency to get so stressed out and panicked he loses the ability to read and think about what multiple bright red warning signs are telling him. If the latter is the case, his constituents might have reason to be concerned about what would happen if he gets panicked during a vote.
