While lots of media outlets have been criticized for having so-called seditionists on their programs while ignoring their complicity in the insurrection, credit The Washington Post for actually going there with Senator Josh Hawley. While interviewing him for Washington Post Live (shown above), the Missouri Republican was asked where he regrets “raising his fist to a pro-Trump mob gathered outside the Capitol on Jan. 6 ahead of the insurrection.” The publication points out, “The senator said he did not regret greeting the mob that way, arguing that many of them were there to peacefully protest, not storm the Capitol.”
“I waved to them, gave them the thumbs-up, pumped my fist to them and thanked them for being there, and they had every right to do that.”
While Hawley went on to say that people who created criminal violence on January 6th, he added: “I don’t know which of those protesters, if any of them, those demonstrators, participated in the criminal riot. And I think it’s a slur on the thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of people who came to the Capitol that day to demonstrate peacefully to lump them in with the criminal rioters and say, ‘Oh, you’re all basically the same.’”
Today Josh Hawley defended raising his fist to protesters on Capitol Hill on the morning of the Trump-incited insurrection.
And @Timodc has some thoughts about that.
Learn more: https://t.co/JzRhwazlk0#11thHour pic.twitter.com/ubbiZDk9YK
— 11th Hour (@11thHour) May 5, 2021
Things turned testy when interviewer Cat Zakrzewski tried to fact-check Hawley during the interview. That’s when the senator claimed Zakrzewski was trying to silence him. It was quite the opposite, the conversation actually went more than 30 minutes.
https://twitter.com/aterkel/status/1389610355106754560
While Zakrzewski did push Hawley on his lies and conspiracy theories, but some people weren’t satisfied and felt he shouldn’t have been given this platform.
The problem was the same one you see on Sunday shows. The guest can turn on his fog machine, lose most of the audience in hand-to-hand combat over important but arcane details, and run out the clock when the push back comes. This is what Hawley did with "election integrity." 2/
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) May 4, 2021
Dear @washingtonpost, I had been toying with canceling my subscription; this finally convinced me to do it.
— Jeanne K (@jkalogridis) May 4, 2021
https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1388983139587039234