Josh Hawley can’t stop embarrassing himself at congressional hearings. The quick-footed senator went on the attack Tuesday against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, due to an employee’s antisemitic social media posts in the wake of Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas.
Hawley suggested the employee’s views speak for the department, which Mayorkas pushed back on. But Hawley, never one to shy away from a possible viral moment, kept interrupting the secretary.“Your performance is despicable, and the fact you’re not willing to provide answers to this community is absolutely atrocious,” he bellowed.
Mayorkas, who said he couldn’t comment on an ongoing personnel matter and mentioned the person in question was hired in 2019, responded with an all-out assault on Hawley’s attention-seeking soliloquies. “What I find despicable is the indication that this language, tremendously odious, could actually be emblematic of the sentiments of the 260,000 men and women of the Department of Homeland Security,” he said.And that was just the start of Mayorkas’ retort.
The secretary also brought up that his mother was a Holocaust survivor. That’s right: Hawley was accusing someone whose own mother labored in the concentration camps of being complicit in the spread of antisemitism.