Ahead of the joint congressional session to nationally certify the victory of then-President-elect Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) raised his fist in solidarity with protestors outside the U.S. Capitol who believed then-President Donald Trump's lies that widespread election fraud delivered Biden a false victory.
As history will remember, these protestors became rioters when the mob of pro-Trump extremists stormed the Capitol, destroying property and facilitating the deaths of at least five people.
Nevertheless, Hawley still objected to the certification of electoral votes in swing states Trump lost.
His amplification of Trump's election lies were largely seen as a contributing factor to the Capitol riots, and it wasn't long before publishing company Simon & Schuster cancelled Hawley's upcoming book.
Hawley used the cancellation to prop up claims that conservative voices are being silenced.
He went on to rail against the "muzzling" of conservatives in an op-ed for the New York Post, one of the largest conservative newspapers in the country.
Hawley writes:
"The alliance of leftists and woke capitalists hopes to regulate the innermost thoughts of every American, from school age to retirement. And they've trained enforcers of the woke orthodoxy to monitor dissent or misbehavior."
The irony that Hawley broadcast critiques of the so-called censorship in a paper with over 230 thousand copies in daily circulation was, apparently, lost on him.
The op-ed generated widespread backlash, but one reply stuck out.
Yale history professor Dr. Glenda Gilmore reminded Hawley of a moment during her lesson on affirmative action, accusing the Senator of disrupting the lesson and holding the conversation hostage before walking out.
People weren't surprised.
But Dr. Gilmore was far from the only one to counter Hawley's complaints.
A number of Hawley's colleagues in the Senate are urging him to resign.
