'The View' hosts brazenly defend Jamaal Bowman after fire alarm incident: 'He panicked'
The View's Sunny Hostin and Whoopi Goldberg defended Democratic Rep. Jamaal Bowman after he pulled a fire alarm on Saturday on the way to a House vote.
"The View" was divided on Monday over whether Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., had purposefully pulled the fire alarm inside a congressional building on his way to delay a House vote Saturday on a bill to avoid a government shutdown.
Surveillance video shows Bowman appearing to pull the alarm in front of two closed doors. The Democrat stunned conservatives after he claimed that he was rushing to cast his vote and pulled the alarm by mistake in an attempt to exit the building.
Co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Whoopi Goldberg adamantly defended the congressman on Monday's show. Hostin said she personally knew Bowman and believed he "panicked" when he couldn't open the door, which were marked as emergency exits. She compared the situation to being trapped in an elevator.
"I don't want to call it a stunt," Hostin insisted.
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"I know Jamaal, and so again, I’m a little biased, but the doors that are normally open so that he could get to the chambers to read, were somehow miraculously closed. How did that happen?" she questioned.
"So yes, sometimes you’re freaking out, and you’re in an elevator, and you’re pressing all the buttons," she added while gesturing frantically.
New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez employed a similar defense, saying her peer pulled the alarm in a "moment of panic."
Goldberg suggested the Democrat wasn't paying attention in his rush to vote, and "pressed a button" in an attempt to open the door.
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"I haven't seen the fire alarm button, so I don't know," she added. Goldberg wondered if the lawmaker had to break glass to get to the button.
"I don't know, it just look--I can't see the button," she said.
The other hosts were less than impressed with these arguments.
As show producers put up a photo showing the clearly marked fire alarm adjacent to the doors that Bowman pulled, co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin teased, "I don't know, it seems pretty fire alarm-y to me."
Goldberg doubled down on her defense of Bowman to end the segment.
"I guess if you're not sure then —find out what it was," she said. The co-host said the real "stunt" was being given only "three minutes" to review the stopgap spending bill.
"I know I would have pressed everything if you told me I had to get in there [quickly]. 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," Goldberg added.
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Fox News' Hanna Panreck contributed to this report.