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.’”

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.

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.