“Morning Joe” cohost Joe Scarborough on Tuesday sniped at Sen. Josh Hawley in response to a Twitter quarrel the Republican from Missouri had with New York Times columnist David French over masculinity.
“Real men don’t sit around whining about a war on manhood,” Scarborough said, emphasizing that Hawley’s public anger is empty gesturing — “a joke,” “a caricature.”
The “Morning Joe” commentary came in response to a Sunday op-ed from French titled, “The Right Is All Wrong About Masculinity,” which said in part that “traditional masculinity says that people should meet a challenge with a level head and firm convictions. Right-wing culture says that everything is an emergency, and is to be combated with relentless trolling and hyperbolic insults.”
French also pointed to Hawley specifically, noting his raised fist of support to Jan. 6 rioters as they stormed the Capitol in 2021.
“For all of its faults when taken to excess, the traditional masculinity of which he claims to be a champion would demand that he stand firm against a howling mob,” French wrote. “Rather, he saluted it with a raised fist — and then ran from it when it got too close and too unruly.”
Hawley retweeted the story Sunday and wrote, “David French takes a break from promoting drag queens to talk about masculinity.”
French then responded, retweeting Hawley: “I write a piece about how the allegedly ‘manly’ right is committed to petty trolling, and Hawley responds to the piece with petty trolling. Thank you, senator, for demonstrating my point.”
After an intro breaking down the interaction from “Morning Joe” cohost Mika Brzezinski, Scarborough dug into Hawley, agreeing with French that his behavior is “petty” (“It’s all about gesturing,” he said) and criticizing the senator for not living up to the promise of his Yale- and Stanford-educated credentials.
“Somebody that given the opportunity to go to Yale, go to Stanford Law School, to have the sort of jobs, to run across people in his life that actually served as great examples — and then to waste it like this, I don’t want to sound too dramatic, but it is heartbreaking,” Scarborough said. “It’s also heartbreaking that he’s feeding lies to young men who actually do need examples of strength, do need examples in Washington and other places of that strength, that sometimes quiet strength when required. And as David French said, you have Josh Hawley that actually did exactly what he said Josh Hawley did: childish trolling and gesturing to the far-far-right.”
Referring to the infamous moment where Hawley raised his fist in solidarity with the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, Scarborough added, “It’s such a caricature. It’s such a joke. I mean, I say it all the time, and I sort of say it tongue in cheek, but I mean, real men don’t sit around whining about a war on manhood. They get up, they go to work, and they work hard and try to do their job. They don’t try to overthrow the blanking government like Josh Hawley did.”
Watch the full “Morning Joe” segment in the video above.
