Sen. Josh Hawley Gets Standing Ovation At CPAC For Electoral College Objection

Se. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) received an enthusiastic  standing ovation at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Friday.

Hawley, who objected to the Electoral College certification by Congress on January 6, declared, “I’m not going anywhere” and noted efforts by the “radical left, their corporate allies [and] the liberal media to cancel me,” as the crowd cheered him on.

“I’m here today, I’m not going anywhere and I’m not backing down, not a chance!” Hawley declared on stage in Orlando, Florida.

“I just want to say to those people who say to us, ‘Oh, you’re the past, your moment has passed, it’s over, it’s Joe Biden‘s America now,’ we’re not the same past, we’re the future, we represent the future of this country,” he said. “We’re not going to back down to the woke mob, we’re not going to back down to the cancel culture, we’re not going to be told that we can say or do.”

Hawley claimed that conservatives are “facing a fight for the Republic itself” and what he called “an unprecedented alliance between radical liberals and the biggest, most powerful corporations in the history of the world,” referring to Google, Facebook and Twitter.

He said the nation is facing a Big Tech “oligarchy” that wants to rule the country, pointing to Twitter’s decision to ban former President Donald Trump from its platform to address the risk that he might incite further violence after the Capitol attack on January 6.

“The Big Tech corporations have de-platformed conservatives left and right. Shut them up, shut them out, shut them down. Heck, they censored the president of the United States. If they can censor him, they can censor any American citizen and I’ve got my own experience with this, unfortunately,” he said.

Hawley also mentioned his decision to object to the certification of the Electoral College vote back in January. “Maybe you hear about it,” he said at the conference, followed by loud applause.

“I stood up and said, ‘We ought to have a debate about election integrity,’ I said, ‘It is the right of the people to be heard and my constituents in Missouri want to be heard on this issue,’ ” he said.

Hawley’s objections on January 6 did not sit well with many politicians from both parties.

While speaking on the Senate floor, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) noted that Trump’s claims of widespread election fraud had been rejected by judges “over and over,” including “all-star judges whom the president himself has nominated.”

“I was called a traitor, I was called a seditionist, the racial left said I should be resigned and if I wouldn’t resign, I should be expelled from the United States Senate,” Hawley said.

Hawley wrote a book, The Tyranny of Big Tech, which was supposed to be published by Simon & Schuster shortly after the Capitol riots, but the publishing company canceled its plans to move forward with the publication.

“It’s still going to get published, by the way, it’ll be out soon,” he said to another round of applause at the conference.

.@HawleyMO explains how the Republican Party used to be the party of the trustbusters. #CPAC2021 #AmericaUnCanceled pic.twitter.com/TeV3E84FOO

— CPAC (@CPAC) February 26, 2021