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HAWLIN’ HAWLEY: Missouri newspapers ridicule their senator for his “core cowardice”

HAWLIN’ HAWLEY: Missouri newspapers ridicule their senator for his “core cowardice”

HAWLIN' HAWLEY: Missouri newspapers ridicule their senator for his "core cowardice"

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) is being mocked by social media — and his state’s largest newspapers — after a video from the Capitol on Jan. 6 shows the fist-pumping politician fleeing the riotous mob. In response to the release of the video footage, The Kansas City Star editorial board referred to the senator as a “laughing stock” and called him a “fleeing coward.”

Missouri Democrats have now dubbed the GOP Senator ‘Hawlin Hawley.” And House Select Committee member Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) referred to his fellow party member as “Fistpump McRunpants.”

Former Metro PD Officer Michael Fanone was even less generous. Fanone told Politico’s JC Whittington after the hearing that “Josh Hawley is a bitch.”

Support for Sen. Hawley in his home state of Missouri also fell short.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch joined in the mockery saying the video “captured his core cowardice” and “demonstrated beyond any doubt that Hawley understood, in real-time, the physical danger he helped uncork that day.”

Something sure to haunt the sprinting senator is the laughter that erupted during the Select Committee proceedings after the quick-moving politician was seen sprinting through a hallway – painting a very different picture from the one captured pre-insurrection where he was portrayed defiantly raising a fist in solidarity with the gathering crowd.

After the violence on January 6th, The Star’s editorial board wrote that “no one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible for Wednesday’s coup attempt at the U.S. Capitol than one Joshua David Hawley,” and said that the Senator had “blood on his hands.”

Hawley used his election denials and insurrection incitement to fundraise while the Capitol riot was still ongoing. In an email sent to potential donors, he said:

“Many career politicians in the D.C. establishment want me to stay quiet. I suppose you can assume nothing I do will matter. That it won’t matter if I object or not, so I should sit by and do nothing.”

The Missouri paper added that Hawley had “disgraced his office and our state.” The editors’ public call for the GOP Senator to resign was echoed by the Post-Dispatch, with the Dispatch saying Hawley “deserves to be cast into political purgatory.”

Though seeing Josh Hawley exposed for being a coward has been fun, I’m looking forward to the day when the American people will have no memory of what ‘a Hawley’ even is.

Original reporting Steve Benen at MSNBC

Follow Ty Ross on Twitter @cooltxchick

Ty Ross
News journalist for Occupy Democrats.

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