Josh Hawley – The Apprentice

Before the Capitol insurrection, Josh Hawley was seen as the future of the Republican Party. He still may be.

- By Tim Murphy

On the morning of January 6, hours before a right-wing mob attacked Congress, leaving five people dead and halting the peaceful transfer of presidential power for the first time in the nation’s history, Josh Hawley arrived at the Capitol early. A group of demonstrators who had answered the president’s call to “stop the steal” cheered when they spotted the 41-year-old first-term Republican senator from Missouri, tall and thin with a youthful swoop of hair. Hawley glanced in their direction with a look of determination and raised his fist in solidarity. The image, captured by a well-placed photographer, would become one of the day’s enduring visuals. It depicted the confident strut of a guy who still thinks everything is going according to plan.

A week earlier, Hawley had been the first senator to announce that he would object to the Electoral College votes from a handful of key states. Not to be outdone in their loyalty to Donald Trump, more than a dozen colleagues (led by Ted Cruz) followed suit, turning a staid tradition into an unprecedented constitutional challenge. When a small group of protesters, clutching candles and bullhorns and signs quoting Hamilton, gathered outside his Washington- area home, Hawley denounced them as “Antifa scumbags” who were “terrorizing” his block. But he shrugged off warnings that, in his quest to earn the affection of Trump and his base, he was leading his followers to a dark place. During a Fox News hit the same evening as the protest at Hawley’s home, Bret Baier pressed the senator to tell viewers that Joe Biden would be president. He refused.