The Right's Newest Obsession: ‘Fire Alarm Gate’
Republicans make equivalency between single fire-alarm pull and January 6 insurrection
Not only are Republicans are trying to turn a single Democratic congressman pulling a fire alarm in the US Capitol over the weekend into their latest scandal, they're trying to make a false equivalency between that fire-alarm pull and the violent riot on January 6, 2021 inspired by Donald Trump.
Rep Jamaal Bowman, of New York, admits to pulling the alarm Saturday as he was making his way through the Capitol to vote on the last-minute spending bill which averted a federal government shutdown.
But, for Republicans, it's quickly become their new outrage, in what some in the media have dubbed “Fire Alarm Gate.”
Although Bowman publicly has taken responsibility for the action, which he said was a mistake as he tried to open a door, Republicans are trying to turn it into a major scandal.
The congressman currently is under investigation over the incident.
Embattled House Speaker Kevin McCarthy called it “a new low,” while Rep Jason Smith, of Missouri, chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, described it as “exactly what happened on January 6.”
“Look, there are some doors in the office buildings that are opened during the week and locked on the weekends. It is possible he was confused as he claims,” Garrett Haake, of NBC News, said in an on-camera report with host Andrea Mitchell. “Republicans think this was all a stall tactic, a stunt if you will to try to delay things.
“There will be an investigation, Andrea. It's hard to see how it could be conclusive. But Republicans they want to kind of see how far they can run the trail on this here,” he added. So we've not heard the last about fire alarm gate from this weekend. Stay tuned there.”
The congressman himself said that he was surprised by the amount of attention that the incident has gotten.
“You know, I don’t know why this has gotten so much attention. I was literally just in a rush to go vote, man. That’s all it was,” he said, adding, “I mean, listen, I take responsibility for what I did, you know, but like I said, I was in a rush to go vote, and, you know, the investigation will sort everything else out.”
Bowman acknowledged that he discussed the matter with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a fellow New York Democrat, but declined to disclose the substance of that conversation.
Bowman's other Democratic colleagues, like fellow New Yorker Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, however, have been pushing back against Republican attacks on him.
“But what I do think is important to raise is the fact that Republicans — representatives like Nicole Malliotakis and others —immediately moved to file motions to censure, motions to expel, before there has even been conversations that are finished to even see if there was a misunderstanding here,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to the Republican congresswoman from New York. “While they did that, what they did not do was to commit to the same when George Santos was actually found guilty, after a thorough investigation, of 13 federal charges.”
Elected last year, Santos (R-NY) was found guilty of a raft of lies about his identity and biography made during the campaign. Santos has yet to see any sanction at the hands of McCarthy’s House leadership.
“He's indicted on everything from wire fraud to actual lying of House investigators. And they have been buddying up and giggling with him on the House floor, and they are protecting someone who has lied to the American people, lied to the United States House of Representatives, lied to congressional investigators,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “But they're filing a motion to expel a member who, in a moment of panic, was trying to escape a vestibule? Give me a break!
“And so the idea that there is somehow any kind of equivalence to someone who is actively trying to clear up a situation that he himself admits he's embarrassed, he released a statement last night, he apologized, and they are protecting someone who has not only committed wire fraud, not only defrauded veterans, not only lied to congressional investigators, but is openly gloating about it, is absolutely humiliating to the Republican Caucus. And I think that they should really check their own values,” she added.
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