Josh Hawley more interested in mocking liberals than White House demolition | Opinion
Donald Trump’s sudden, unannounced destruction of the East Wing is a shocking act of arrogance — a declaration of sorts that he alone owns the White House, that this president is something more than a temporary tenant occupying the historic premises at the sufferance of the American people.
Shocking, but not really a surprise at this point.
Josh Hawley? He sees this moment as a chance to own the libs.
Missouri’s senior senator went on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show on Tuesday night — his mission not so much to defend Trump’s demolition of taxpayer-owned property, but to sneer at Democrats and other Americans angry and surprised at the president’s decision.
“Once again, let’s remember, these people burned whole cities to the ground, Laura, when they had a political disagreement with somebody else,” he told Fox News viewers. “These people don’t believe in institutions. They don’t believe in history. All they believe in is power.”
The senator posted the clip on X, with a note: “I love watching the liberals melt down.”
Not even shocking. It’s weak.
What if Obama did it?
Let’s dispense with Hawley’s hyperbole — “whole cities” did not burn to the ground during the terrible summer of 2020 — and otherwise grant him the favor of taking his words seriously.
Say for the sake of argument that the senator is somehow correct. That Democrats and other Americans offended by the president are willing to destroy history. That they are willing to tear down institutions. That all those lefties really care about is power.
So what?
Implicit in Hawley’s comments is the idea that Republicans are better than Democrats. That the GOP is the defender of history and institutions, that his party aspires to something more than the raw exercise of authority.
Can you look at the rubble of the East Wing — actual destruction, a bald assertion of power by a president who refuses legal and constitutional boundaries — and take that notion the least bit seriously?
Not really.
Which makes it easy to read Hawley cynically, to understand him suggesting somehow that two wrongs make a right. You might think this is bad, but Democrats are bad, so it’s OK for Republicans to do what they want.
Most 7-year-olds know better.
It is possible that Hawley wasn’t really trying to make a coherent moral point at all, that his social media posting accurately explained his thinking: Tasked with defending an action he couldn’t really defend — just imagine the senator’s reaction if Barack Obama had torn down a section of the White House — Hawley simply tried to trigger liberals into a “meltdown.”
If so, that would be pure nihilism in action.
A lot of dimes
Trump, of course, plans to build a giant new $300 million ballroom on land where the East Wing stood. Liberals are angry, Hawley said in a separate X posting, because the president “is renovating the White House on his own dime.”
That’s not entirely true.
Donors to the construction effort reportedly include defense contractor Lockheed Martin, management firm Booz Allen Hamilton and Google — companies that all want to stay in the president’s good graces for a variety of reasons.
What’s more, the East Wing demolition occurred on the same day as reports that Trump may soon order the Department of Justice — now staffed by his personal attorneys — to pay him $230 million for its investigations of him over the last decade.
That’s a lot of dimes.
All of this means that the Missouri senator’s defense of Trump ranged from irritatingly provocative to questionably accurate. It made a few liberals mad. Again. Good for him, I guess? Trump may be demolishing American democracy — and big chunks of the White House along with it — but at least he knows Josh Hawley will always be at his service, no matter what.
This story was originally published October 23, 2025 at 5:07 AM.
