Missouri GOP Sens. Josh Hawley and Roy Blunt were taken to task in a stinging column published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board this week.
The newspaper’s board suggested the pair should have used ex-President Donald Trump’s Senate impeachment trial for inciting the deadly U.S. Capitol riot to distance themselves from Trump and “to redeem themselves for blindly supporting a man whose conduct was indefensible.”
But instead, the editorial said, Hawley and Blunt were now just “bringing additional embarrassment to the state after having flirted with the abolition of democracy in favor of keeping a dictator wannabe in the White House.”
Both Hawley and Blunt voted that the impeachment trial of Trump is unconstitutional.
Hawley was one of the GOP’s fiercest promoters of Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen because of mass voter fraud. Hawley, who was pictured pumping his fist to Trump supporters before the riot began, voted to overturn the election result.
In the days following the riot, Blunt described Trump’s rallying of his supporters to march on the Capitol as “clearly reckless” — but suggested Trump had learned his lesson and needed no further censure.
“At least 41.4% of Hawley’s and Blunt’s constituents voted to oust Trump, and certainly they want to see him brought to justice,” the Post-Dispatch concluded its editorial, titled “Hawley and Blunt deepen Missouri’s embarrassment by refusing to see Trump’s guilt.”
“Ther ‘legitimate concerns’ deserve a fist-pump, too.”