The pun game was strong on Monday evening with former "Daily Show" headwriter Lizz Winstead and MSNBC host Ari Melber as the two joined together to continue the mockery of Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO).
Over the weekend, Hawley, ironically, told the Talking Points USA conference attendees, "I'm not going to run from you."
Winstead, who now runs the reproductive freedom advocacy group Abortion Access Front, called Hawley "hawlarious" for fleeing for his life from his own supporters after encouraging them earlier. Melber responded by saying that when he invited her to come on the show he didn't know she'd be "joshing around."
The conversation was about Winstead's observations of Hawley over the several years prior to his rise to the U.S. Senate as someone who is a far-right extremist. As an attorney general, she noted that he was supportive of Hobby Lobby refusing to allow their workers to have access to no-cost birth control in their healthcare packages.
"He's one of the classic people I feel like that is going to be so awful, so he can hate you first, so that he doesn't have to deal with people not liking him," said Winstead. "Because he's incapable of being likable. The clip from that Turning Points conference and he had his Anderson Cooper black t-shirt on trying to look all hardass, it's like, aw, dude. What's happening? The fact that anybody bought a fist bump from a guy in a red tie, in his suit, it's like, oh, my goodness! You and your Dockers and your suit and solidarity -- it's sort of like if the insurrectionists were the worst theme park in the world — which I feel like they created, like a racist, white supremacist theme park, Josh Hawley could be their mascot. You know, just wandering around in that suit and doing that."
Melber noted that it's so contrived that he claims to support them when at the same time he knows he's not really supportive of them, in fact he's afraid of them.
"Which, in some ways is worse, or equally bad," said Melber. "And he appears to believe they're really for him. You mentioned theme parks and that prism. I want to show he's still dealing merch here. I mean, this was a criminal attack on the Capital and he still has up here this fist-pump image, a photo taken by Politico that he is with his trolling emoji selling on mugs."
Hawley is part of the new argument that women are going to war against men and trying to make them more feminine by eliminating their masculinity. He told a National Conservatism conference of supporters that women want to eliminate a man's courage and independence from society.
Winstead disputed the idea that courage was masculine, noting that Hawley doesn't even understand the science of gender. "He's a mess!"
"And I think that he is the classic example of just one more flame on the gaslight," she explained. "It's just Yale, you know, everything that he purports that he hates, he is. And trying to connect with where he took this wild turn to become the iconic coffee cup, fist-pumping, troll instead of a path he could have gone down. He could have been a Ben Sasse-er. He could have been any of those people. He's not dumb. He could have been a garden variety Republican person who doesn't really enjoy helping poor people. Instead, he became — he threw his hat in with grifting white supremacists, and is it that important to be liked that it doesn't matter how awful the people are?"
She said that "the one person who's really excited about it is Ted Cruz." The Texas Republican Senator has long been considered the foe of all members of the U.S. Senate, even among his own party. But with Hawley in the picture, "Cruz is like, finally, someone more hated than me. This is awesome. I can take a breather."
See the exchange below or at this link.
Lizz Winstead shredding Josh Hawleywww.youtube.com
