There are many ways to describe Missouri U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, including but not limited to pompous, slippery, a show-off. There are others, but this is a family-friendly site. Yet above all, Hawley is consistent in one thing, and that is running away from problems he helped create.
We all remember that video. On January 6, 2021, as the U.S. Capitol was under siege by Trump-incited insurrectionists, security footage showed Hawley sprinting through the Capitol’s halls, scared to the bejesus that he was going to be attacked by the very people he egged on that day.
You see, hours earlier he had boastfully raised a defiant fist in solidarity with the rioters, urging them on from behind the safety of police barricades. Those images, fist up, then feet flying, captured Hawley’s entire political ethos of talking big, and running fast.
Now Hawley is at it again, this time fleeing the consequences of the draconian Medicaid cuts he supported as part of Donald Trump’s so-called big beautiful bill. The bill is a grotesque grab bag of Republican cruelty toward the middle class, poor, and marginalized. Or, in other words, cruelty toward anyone except those who are rich and über-rich.
Hawley voted for the bill. But now, with thousands of low-income Missourians facing the loss of vital health coverage, Hawley is suddenly trying to rewrite his role in the disaster.
He wants to repeal the very Medicaid cuts he voted for. Um, Josh, see, this is how it works. You could have stopped the bill and those cuts by voting against it when the bill came to the Senate floor. Further, you could have saved the equally obnoxious JD Vance from casting the tie-breaking vote.
You, Josh Hawley, could have been a hero to Medicaid recipients, but now you’re clowning around with their benefits. Admittedly, this is hardly out of character for a man who has built a career on hollow posturing and headline-chasing blunders.
Josh Hawley knew what the bill did. He knew the Trump-approved budget slashed Medicaid funding to the states. He knew his vote would hurt his constituents, rural families, seniors, working-class Missourians, all struggling to stay afloat. But he didn’t care, because at the time, it was politically expedient to fall in line with Trump and his GOP wrecking crew.
Now that the backlash has begun, Hawley wants to play hero. Hawley is “seeking to repeal” those very Medicaid cuts, scrambling to distance himself from the consequences of his own actions. It’s a pathetic attempt to have it both ways.
He’s pretending he was never part of that God-awful GOP wrecking crew while now rushing in with a hammer to fix the windows he helped smash – a metaphorical reference to his behavior on Jan 6.
This episode reminds me of another iconic flip-flop. In 2004, Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry tried to explain his complicated Iraq war vote by saying, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.”
That line became the defining gaffe of his campaign, an unforced error that painted him as a flip-flopper with no convictions. Kerry had nuance on his side. Hawley, by contrast, has none, just sheer panic as he scrambles to save face.
Like Kerry, Hawley voted for the thing before he voted against it, or at least he’s trying to now. But unlike Kerry, who was navigating a post-9/11 foreign policy minefield, Hawley was just trying to score MAGA points by supporting a bill he now admits is hurting his own constituents.
Hawley’s political rise has always been steeped in arrogance. In 2018, after pledging to serve a full term as Missouri attorney general, he immediately broke that promise to run for Senate. Then he quickly climbed aboard the MAGA train.
He championed baseless election fraud claims, objected to certifying Joe Biden’s victory, and built a brand around faux masculinity. Like he’s the bastion of manliness. What a joke. I don’t know what’s funnier, Hawley’s pseudo masculinity or his pseudo support for Medicaid?
His manliness branding culminated in his 2023 book Manhood, which really was a joke. It was so intellectually feeble and self-serious that reviewers couldn’t help but chuckle. The Washington Post panned it as “a confused, regressive little book,” while LitHub simply declared, “Critics really hate Josh Hawley’s stupid book about manhood.”
As a proud man, I wouldn’t have been caught dead reading Hawley’s book. If it was an attempt to make him look manly after he looked like a sissy running through the Capitol, he failed miserably.
And how about his grandstanding on Citizens United? He once tried to play populist hero by introducing a bill to reverse the decision. It’s the very same decision that helps funnel dark money into GOP campaigns, including his own. It was a stunt so devoid of self-awareness that even Ted Cruz probably scoffed.
As an aside, can you imagine being stranded on an island with both Cruz and Hawley? And the only books you’re allowed are Cruz’s Unwoke and Hawley’s Manhood.? Let me apologize for ruining your day with this nauseating thought.
Ok back to the problem that is Hawley. And the problem isn’t just that Hawley is dumb. It’s that he thinks you are.
He thinks the people of Missouri won’t remember that he voted for Medicaid cuts before scrambling – unsuccessfully I might add – to undo them when the political winds shifted. He thinks he can play both sides indefinitely, by posing as the working man’s champion while carrying water for billionaires and extremists.
Sadly, enough voters fell for his phoniness and reelected him in 2024. So we’re stuck with him until 2030, unless, by some miracle, the smart folks of Missouri demand a recall; however, Missouri does not allow recall efforts for U.S. senators. Maybe they can change the law?
And the danger extends to the Hawley household. His wife, Erin Hawley, is arguably just as extreme. As a senior legal fellow at the Christian conservative powerhouse Alliance Defending Freedom, she was part of the team that worked on the Dobbs case, which overturned Roe. v. Wade.
While Josh is busy cutting Medicaid and then pretending he didn’t, Erin is fighting to deny reproductive healthcare to millions of women.
In the end, it’s not the weirdness or the stupidity that’s most offensive, it’s the utter contempt Hawley seems to have for the people he claims to represent. He thinks he can light fires, flee the blaze, and then say he helped put out the fires. But the smoke is catching up with Hawley.
You can only sprint from your record for so long, because all your contradictions will someday catch up. So enjoy the run while you can, Josh.
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This article originally appeared on Advocate: Waffler and coward Josh Hawley runs away — again — from a problem he helped create
