This is the story of two New York firebrands, both with histories of bigotry, bullying, law-breaking, promoting false conspiracy theories, making obscene public tirades and playing the martyr.
One of those who is supported by the Republican Party will become president and may become president again.
The other, who had distanced himself from the Democratic Party, was defeated by Democrats in Tuesday night's House primary.
Donald Trump and Jamaal Bowman have little in common ideologically, but they are both classic thugs of American politics. Their differing fates say less about them than about their parties' tolerance of extremism.
At mass rallies across the country this year, Trump has unleashed a barrage of vulgarities — “bullshit,” “shithole,” “scum,” “shot in the ass,” “f***hole” — and his audiences have sometimes shouted them back with filthy slogans. Bowman, at a weekend rally, spoke about getting big money out of politics. “We're going to show f***ing AIPAC the power of f***ing South Bronx! … We're going to show them who we are!” he said, as he lifted chairs over his head and slammed them on the ground. (Bowman does not represent the South Bronx.)
“If I take this shirt off, you'll see a beautiful man,” Trump told a group of evangelical Christians over the weekend, but it would also show that “I've been hurt more than any president has ever been hurt.” (Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy could not be reached for comment.) Bowman played the victim at the rally, twice rolling up his T-shirt sleeves to “draw his gun” and expose his biceps. “They ask me why I'm so nasty. What do I do? You're coming after me. You're coming after my family. You're coming after my children.”
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These aren't just superficial similarities. Trump, a felon and habitual carnival barker, spews a string of “big lies” and other conspiracy theories and routinely demonizes immigrants and racial and religious minorities. And Bowman? Before coming to Congress, he promoted the absurd idea that the 9/11 attacks were an inside job (he expressed regret after his writings were discovered this year). On the House floor, he heckles speakers. In and around the Capitol, he likes to taunt Republicans (“What cowards!”) and get into shouting matches with anyone who takes his bait. He pleaded guilty last year to setting off a fire alarm in a congressional office building, forcing an evacuation when Democrats were trying to delay a key vote (he claimed, implausibly, that it was an accident).
Worse, Bowman called a (accurate) report that a Hamas attacker raped an Israeli woman on October 7 a “lie” and “propaganda.” Though he later said he regretted it, he accused Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide” and called the American Israel Public Affairs Committee racist when the group ran a campaign against him. (“They want to call me the N-word,” said Bowman, who is black.) He told Politico that Westchester County, the heart of his district, “is segregated. There are places where Jews live and are concentrated. … I have no doubt they decided to do that for their own reasons.” As a result, Bowman said, “we've been segregated, discriminated against and miseducated.”
But here's the key difference: While Trump's bigotry has become the norm for MAGA Republicans, Bowman's fellow Democrats have had no patience for his, well, bullshit.
“There's a word for this scapegoating: anti-Semitism,” Rep. Ritchie Torres said of a fellow New York Democrat who claimed that Jews “segregated” themselves. And after Bowman's vulgar rant in the South Bronx, Torres wrote to X, “The level of profanity here is shockingly unbecoming of a member of Congress. Jamaal Bowman's outrageous rant bears no resemblance to the decency of the people I know in the South Bronx.”
While House Democratic leadership nominally supports all incumbents, including Bowman, they have not campaigned for him or opposed AIPAC's massive spending to oust him, Punchbowl News reported. And on Tuesday, Democrats in New York's 16th Congressional District rejected Bowman, nominating Westchester County Mayor George Latimer for the Democratic-dominated district.
Democrats' ability to stand up to extremism doesn't necessarily make them more honorable than Republicans. It's also a matter of math: Gallup polls show that 72% of Republicans identify as conservative, while only 27% identify as moderate or liberal. But among Democrats, the numbers are more evenly split: 54% are liberal, and 46% are moderate or conservative.
These numbers make it harder for extremists to win Democratic primaries. They explain why the group of far-left Democrats informally known as “the Squad” in the House of Representatives has fewer than 10 members (including Bowman), while its far-right counterpart, the House Freedom Caucus, has about four times as many members. In contrast to Squad members Bowman and Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri), who will face tough primary opponents in August, Freedom Caucus firebrand Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) won her primary handily on Tuesday night. The only member of the Freedom Caucus who could lose the primary (pending a recount) is Chairman Bob Good (R-Va.), but he is trailing another election-denying extremist backed by President Trump.
Bowman will soon be gone. And that's fine. There will surely be more like him. The right doesn't have a monopoly on tyrants and demagogues. But in a time when the country is losing its mind, it's an encouraging sign that there are still significant groups on the left who are willing to say “Fuck it.”
