Josh Hawley’s home state newspaper calls senator ‘fleeing coward’

‘Josh Hawley is a laughingstock,’ wrote the editorial board for the Kansas City Star, the newspaper that covers the city where the Republican senator spent most of his childhood and adolescent years

The home state paper of Missouri Senator Josh Hawley panned the Republican as a “fleeing coward” in response to the footage released by the January 6 committee which showed him scampering through the halls away from the Capitol rioters mere hours after he was photographed raising a fist in solidarity with the mob.

“Josh Hawley is a laughingstock,” wrote the editorial board for the Kansas City Star, the newspaper that covers the city where Sen Hawley spent most of his childhood and adolescent years.

The op-ed goes on to detail how during Thursday night’s televised prime time hearing of the House committee investigating the 6 January Capitol riot, Rep Elaine Luria screened a clip of the Missouri junior senator “that will surely follow him the rest of his life”.

“In the clip, Hawley sprints across a hallway as he and his fellow senators are evacuated after insurrectionists had breached the Capitol building. When it went across the screen, the audience in the room with the committee erupted in laughter,” the editorial continues, before highlighting the seeming irony that the social-conservative, election-denying lawmaker who frequently totes the decline of American masculinity as a “dire threat to society” was captured darting away from the very mob he’d only moments before been instigating with a raised arm.

“A signature Hawley issue is masculinity — as in, how little of it American men seem to have these days,” the Kansas City Star wrote. “Twitter didn’t see much bravado as he ran from the mob on Luria’s video.”

Online, the Twitterverse exploded with memes, GIFs and comparisons, as the hashtag #HawlinAss began to trend shortly after the hearing aired the unseen footage.

In one now viral thread, Twitter user Mallory Nees created a compilation of the brief clip scored to various songs and themes, including everything from the decades-old Kate Bush song, "Running Up That Hill”, that’s been given the Stranger Things renaissance treatment, to Bruce Springsteen’s thumping classic “Born to Run”.

All joking aside, the editorial notes, Sen Hawley might be able to brush aside the Twitter pile on (the day after #HawlinAss began trending, he reshared a link to a coffee mug he sells with the now lambasted image of him fist-pumping outside the Capitol alongside a kissing-face emoji), the senator could still face real repercussions for his activities on the 6 January.

“Sen. Josh Hawley might not fear a little mockery of his hasty flight from Capitol marauders. But he might be justified if he’s afraid of what emails or text messages some previously-loyal staffer might be considering turning over to the House committee,” the editorial added.

On Thursday during the prime time hearing, vice chairman of the committee Rep Liz Cheney announced there would be more public hearings to come, adding that: “In the course of these hearings, we have received new evidence and new witnesses have bravely stepped forward … Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued, and the dam has begun to break.”

During Rep Luria’s screening of the now viral clip, she explained how a Capitol officer who had provided testimony to the House committee had argued that Mr Hawley’s actions had amounted to “riling up” the crowd on that deadly day in January.

“We spoke with a Capitol police officer who was out there at the time. She told us that just Senator Hawley’s gesture riled up the crowd. And it bothered her greatly because he was doing it in a safe space, protected by the officers and the barriers,” the congresswoman said.

“Think about what we’ve seen,” she added. “Undeniable violence at the Capitol. The vice president being evacuated to safety by the Secret Service. Senators running through the hallways of the Senate to get away from the mob.”

The next public hearings are expected to begin again in September, Chair Bennie Thompson announced at the start of Thursday’s hearing.

“As we’ve made clear throughout these hearings, our investigation goes forward.”