Sen. Josh Hawley raised more than $3 million since January’s Capitol riot, a change in fortunes for the Missouri Republican who initially lost some donors for his role in challenging the 2020 presidential election results.
Politico reported Monday that Hawley received more than 57,000 donations during 2021’s first quarter, raising nearly $600,000 in the two and a half week period following the January 6 MAGA riot, even though he’d stopped actively fundraising.
In the first quarter of 2019, directly after winning election, Hawley raised just $43,000, Politico said.
Hawley’s fundraising totals were similar to those of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, as both lawmakers continue to be aligned with the Trump-wing of the Republican Party and have seen small-dollar donor fundraising success.
Hawley has used his notoriety to pitch ideas that aren’t typically in line with the politics of the modern Republican Party, such as an idea to ‘trust-bust’ big companies.
Sen. Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, has raised $3 million in the first quarter of 2021, raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars in the weeks after the January 6 MAGA riot
Sen. Josh Hawley gives a clinched-first salute to supporters of President Donald Trump who were gathering outside the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6
Later, that mob broke into the Capitol in a violent incident that killed five in the immediate aftermath
Axios reported Monday on Hawley’s ‘Trust-Busting for the Twenty-First Century Act,’ which would ban mergers and acquisitions made by firms with a market cap over $100 billion.
It would lower the threshold to prosecute companies using existing federal antitrust laws.
It would require companies that lose federal antitrust lawsuits to ‘forfeit all their profits resulting from monopolistic conduct.’
And finally it would empower the Federal Trade Commission to regulate ‘dominant digital firms.’
‘This country and this government shouldn’t be run by a few mega-corporations,’ Hawley told Axios.
The GOP ‘has got to become the party of trust-busting once again,’ he continued.
‘You know, that’s a part of our history,’ Hawley added.
Hawley was speaking about Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, the Progressive-era leader known for breaking up big businesses.
The more recent iteration of the Republican Party has been friendly to big business, however a number of GOP lawmakers have gone to war with the large tech firms, for showing, in their view, an anti-conservative bias.
Hawley’s plan goes further than just threatening to break up ‘big tech,’ Axios points out, noting that its rules applying to mergers extending to banking, health, retail and media.
‘We tried it the way that the big corporatists wanted,’ Hawley told Axios. ‘And it hasn’t been a success for the American consumer, for the American producer or for the American economy.’
Publisher Simon & Schuster canceled Sen. Josh Hawley’s book (pictured) over his role in the MAGA riot
Hawley has been trying to brand himself as a Republican Party thought leader, though the book he had been working on, titled ‘The Tyranny of Big Tech,’ got canceled by publisher Simon & Schuster in the aftermath of the January 6 riot.
‘As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: at the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat,’ Simon & Schuster said.
Hawley shot back calling those who work for the publishing house a ‘woke mob.’
Hawley was the first senator who said he’d support a House GOP plan to challenge some of the Electoral College votes from swing states – an effort former President Donald Trump supported, as it extended the farce he was feeding to his supporters that the election result could be overturned.
That narrative – that the election was ‘stolen’ – motivated the MAGA mob to take over the Capitol Building, a violent incident that killed five in the immediate aftermath.
Lawmakers are able to object, debate and then vote on states’ tallies during the mandatory January 6 session – but the votes for that effort to be successful simply weren’t there, nor does Congress truly have the power to overrule the Electoral College count, most scholars believe.
