Can Josh Hawley out-Trump Trump with the working person?
If you offered me half of Elon Musk's holdings to tell you what Josh Hawley truly believes, I would not be able to cash the check.
But after watching our senior U.S. senator for eight years now, I can say with confidence that he likes to stand out in a crowd.
By being first to object to the 2020 Electoral College results, then claiming he never tried to overturn the election that Joe Biden won, he did more harm than we'll ever be able to calculate. But there he was, leading the way, even if it was to perdition.
With that infamous raised fist on Jan. 6, he tried to rally the rioters he then bolted away from. But hey, by that afternoon, many more Americans knew his name.
Our man Hawley played a big role in the Big Lie: The risk that Donald Trump would not leave office after his defeat in 2020 really only became real, according to the 2021 book 'Peril,' by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, when Hawley said he would object to the Electoral College certification.
In the traumatic hours after the attack on the Capitol, Hawley stood off to himself on the Senate floor, as The Star reported at the time. According to the book, 'No one spoke to Hawley, who many of them blamed for instigating the riot by announcing his opposition to the certification a week earlier.'
Eventually, Sens. Ted Cruz and Roy Blunt asked him what he was going to do, and 'even with the carnage and push from some colleagues to stand down, Hawley decided he would keep his objection to both Arizona and Pennsylvania. He would remain in lockstep with Trump. When told of his decision, many of his Republican colleagues groaned. … Other Republicans would surely stick with Hawley, fearful of being seen as out of step with Trump's voters.'
So what to make, then, of Hawley's recent declarations that he would never, no not ever, vote to cut Medicaid, as the Big Beautiful Bill currently does in a big, ugly way?
This is quite a turnaround for someone who tried so hard to repeal Obamacare, and to fight Medicaid expansion.
Lately, Hawley has started saying that cutting this precious program for the most vulnerable is one line he'd never cross, and that what's more, it's one that Trump wouldn't cross, either.
This is clever, because how can Trump call him out for quoting Trump's own campaign promise to the public? Trump pushed hard for the House to pass the 'Big Beautiful Bill,' cuts and all, which it did. And when Hawley says Trump would never sign his own BBB if it included Medicaid cuts, well, sure he wouldn't.
Hawley is right that cutting Medicaid would be a disaster for low-income families and the disabled and those with autism and in nursing homes.
It's also incontrovertibly true that such cuts would hit Missourians particularly hard: An analysis by KFF Health News earlier this month found that Missouri was one of six states, along with Kentucky, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina and West Virginia that would suffer the most.
A recent front-page piece in The New York Times suggested that Hawley the culture warrior has also been 'less noisily' on the side of the little guy all along. So much less noisily that I can't say we ever noticed the effects of all those years of effort in Missouri.
The graduate of Rockhurst High, Stanford and Yale Law, who clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts and spent a gap year teaching at St. Paul's in London, does, like Trump, who was a millionaire in grade school, talk an awful lot about how much the elites hate us regular folks.
At Hawley's Senate campaign launch in 2018, I was still capable of disappointment at hearing him start right in with this us-versus-them golden oldie: 'The liberal elites who call themselves our leaders refer to us as flyover country,' he said. 'They deride not just our location but our whole way of living.' But, that's a song that always gets them out on the dance floor, and maybe the aggrievement was genuine.
The Times piece about him said that as a longtime populist, Hawley had from his earliest days in office done things like go after opioid manufacturers as attorney general of our state. He did file lawsuits against them, it's true, and maybe he would have done so anyway.
But he did that, as The Star reported, after discussion with the Washington political consultants who were involved in running his office and then his U.S. Senate campaign to get him some national buzz. And this was after his soon-to-be Senate opponent, Claire McCaskill, had already launched a Senate investigation into the opioid industry.
My point is really that we have heard many words but seen few results from Josh Hawley, man of the people.
If our senior senator really wants to, as a former aide to Bernie Sanders told The New York Times, break up the cozy relationship between his party and corporate America that's gone on since Reagan was president, does that mean he'll challenge Trump for selling access and demanding fealty from CEOs who then cash in? Rhetorical question.
In some ways, what Hawley is doing reminds me of the recent moves from California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who is breaking with his party and running to the center on trans athletes, limits on Medi-Cal for undocumented immigrants and declarations that he's going to stop 'funding failure' when it comes to curbing homelessness.
Only, where Newsom is concerned, everyone and his puppy sees what he's doing as a bald political calculation in preparation for a potential '28 presidential run.
He's getting nothing but noogies, both from his own party and from Republicans, for tacking to the center, while Hawley has been praised and reappraised by Democrats for simply saying he wouldn't cut Medicaid.
The Wall Street Journal did disapprovingly note 'Josh Hawley's Medicaid Switcheroo.' And on X, he's being pressured to change his mind.
Of course, if Missourians lost their health care, and Grandma couldn't stay in the nursing home, those giving him grief now would feel differently. And if that's what he's betting on, then he's right.
Hawley's ambition is one of the only other things I know for sure about him.
In his own recent essay in The Times, he made it seem that on the issue of Medicaid cuts, this is him and Trump against the bad guys.
'Mr. Trump has promised working-class tax cuts and protection for working-class social insurance, such as Medicaid,' he wrote. 'But now a noisy contingent of corporatist Republicans — call it the party's Wall Street wing — is urging Congress to ignore all that and get back to the old-time religion: corporate giveaways, preferences for capital and deep cuts to social insurance.'
I can practically hear the score to 'Les Mis' in the background, calling us to the barricades, can't you?
Now that the Republican House has passed the bill with those very same deep cuts — deeper, actually — it will be up to the Senate to stop the worst of it. Far less surprisingly, Sens. Jerry Moran of Kansas and Susan Collins of Maine have concerns about the bill, and Sen. Ron Johnson thinks it doesn't cut spending enough. They have until July to figure it out.
Maybe Hawley won't backtrack at this point.
And trying to out-Trump Trump with the working person, if that's the goal, would not actually be that hard. But if he really wants to become Trump's heir, and make that dreamed-of presidential run in the way that he hopes, he'll have to start doing more than talk.
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When they say that the last thing to go is a boxer's punch, it gives hope to just about any boxer who can still form a fist. It is therefore not only an adage but cruel, for it suggests that where there is a punch there is always a way. It suggests that punching power will come to a boxer's rescue in their time of need and that it will be there long after their speed, timing, reflexes and resistance have all gone. The problem is, a boxer's ability to punch — hard, soft or otherwise — is often dependent on those very things, and seldom is throwing a punch ever just a case of throwing a punch. To do it right, and generate power, the punch must, A) be thrown correctly, and, B) land. Ideally, when we talk of power being the last thing to go, we should be more honest. We should emphasize that it is star power, not punch power, we are talking about. For it is that, more than anything else, a promoter will aim to exploit when offering an aging boxer a route back, and it is that an aging boxer can usually rely upon, more so than their punch, when in need of either money or attention. Unlike a punch, you see, it always works and never lets them down. It may fade or become tarnished over time, but there is still no longevity like that of a big name. Mike Tyson's, for example, has outlasted even his ability to punch hard. We saw evidence of this last year when Tyson, at the age of 58, attracted 60 million eyeballs to Netflix on the power of his name yet struggled to then throw six power punches during a fight against Jake Paul. You also have Manny Pacquiao's name. His name continues to open doors and secure rankings at the age of 46, with a WBC welterweight title shot against Mario Barrios recently announced for July 19 in Las Vegas. 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'Man, it's hard,' said Shane Mosley, a former lightweight, welterweight and super welterweight world champion of retirement. 'If I hadn't hurt my arm, and if I hadn't had surgery and the doctor messed up my arm, I would probably have gone on boxing a lot longer. Since my arm got hurt, I had to retire at 45. I can't be like Bernard [Hopkins, who was still active in his 50s]. That could have been a goal of mine had it not been for the injury.' That Mosley somehow considered retirement at 45 to be premature tells you everything about the mentality of the world champion boxer afraid of irrelevance. For Mosley was no fool, nor was he deluded enough to think he was as good at 45 as he was at 35, much less 25. In fact, he knew, having lost his final fight against David Avanesyan, that he could no longer do most of the things he once took for granted and made look so easy. 'I felt good but I was frustrated the whole damn fight,' Mosley said of his swan song. 'I was almost knocking him out a couple of times but I couldn't knock him out. 'How come I'm hitting him with these shots but I can't knock him out?' I was frustrated. Also, 'How come he's hitting me with these stupid shots and I know he's getting ready to do it, and I know they're coming, but I'm still getting hit? Why?' Those thoughts shouldn't be going through your head when you're fighting. But they were that night. He would turn southpaw and throw a stupid right hook and catch me with it. I knew exactly what he was going to do but couldn't do nothing about it.' Anthony Mundine lands a left on Shane Mosley during the WBA International super welterweight title bout on November 27, 2013 in Sydney, Australia. (Mark Metcalfe via Getty Images) The date of Mosley's realization was May 28, 2016, and the result of the fight was a unanimous decision loss. Five years prior to that, he had boxed Manny Pacquiao and was knocked down in Round 3 and been unable to win a single round or seemingly pull the trigger. It led to one of four defeats Mosley suffered in a three-year period, which included a draw against Sergio Mora and a stoppage loss against Anthony Mundine, two men well below the normal level at which Mosley flourished. Yet still, despite the signs, Mosley carried on. He kept punching, he kept hurting, and he kept taking the opportunities promoters were willing to give him in exchange for his name and his brain. 'I couldn't believe it was going to go the way it did, or for as long as it did, but I have always been obsessed with boxing,' Mosley said. 'I started doing it at 8 and eventually I was like, 'You know what? I'm going to box until the wheels fall off and I can't do it no more.' I just loved boxing. I was in love with it.' Like any toxic relationship, what starts as infatuation can later sour, and the very thing you once loved can in the end be the same thing that destroys you. This is true of the relationship most boxers have with boxing, a sport designed to cause damage, and no amount of distance or clarity prevents them being drawn back together when the time comes. Even though they accept that most reunions will end in tears, the outcome itself is never the point. All a tempted fighter needs to know is whether it can be done or not. They have no interest in whether it can be done well, or indeed whether it should be done. They just want to know if it is possible. That's why even injuries — bad ones — are no longer a deterrent in the eyes of some retired fighters. They can be healed with time, like any trauma, and after a while a retired fighter will either compartmentalize or simply forget the pain of old. 'How come I'm hitting him with these shots but I can't knock him out?' Also, 'How come he's hitting me with these stupid shots and I know he's getting ready to do it, and I know they're coming, but I'm still getting hit? Why?' Shane Mosley Take Sergio Martinez, for instance. He was forced to retire in 2014 due to a series of knee surgeries and was before that seen wearing a knee brace and struggling to stand, let alone move, as Miguel Cotto put him out of his misery in Round 10 of a WBC middleweight title fight. If ever a fighter looked done, it was Martinez that night. Patched up and stitched together, his body had already bailed on him and all he required from Cotto was some help out the door. By the time he then got it, there was not only a look of resignation on the Argentine's face, but on Cotto's a look of sadness, for he knew the fight had ceased to be a fight and was now closer to an intervention. Martinez, that night, was 39 years of age; a good age to call it quits, irrespective of all the injuries. However, because he started boxing late, at 20, the two-weight world champion refused to see age as an accurate gauge. Nor did he see injuries, no matter their severity, as the thing that would ultimately stop him doing what he loved to do. And so, at the age of 45, Martinez inevitably returned to the ring. Tentative at first, he elected to have four routine fights in Spain, the last of which involved England's Macaulay McGowan, a boxer who had lost his two previous fights. 'He's actually my mum's age,' McGowan, 19 years Martinez's junior, said at the time. 'I'm in two minds about it. When I see old fighters come back, I sometimes think, 'Screw them, what the hell are they doing? It's a joke.' Then other times I think, 'Fair play to them. Why the hell not?' 'I used to have a little crappy dongle [USB stick] stuffed into the side of my computer and all weekend I'd be watching different boxers. One day it would [Marco Antonio] Barrera and the next it would be [Erik] Morales or [Arturo] Gatti. Martinez was also one of my favorites to watch, and after watching him, I'd go to the gym on the Monday as a southpaw with my hands down, jumping around, throwing big one-twos.' Former two-weight world champion Sergio Martinez competed well into his 40s. (NurPhoto via Getty Images) Whether it's fans or opponents, there remains a market and a captive audience for the retired, big-name fighter, and therefore an incentive for them to return. 'He's not the man he was by any stretch, Martinez, but I want that Martinez win on my record,' said McGowan, knowing the power of names. 'All these great British fighters have lost to Martinez over the years, but soon you'll see on Boxrec: Macaulay McGowan beat Sergio Martinez.' The fact that this result cannot be found on has less to do with Sergio Martinez's form as a man in his mid-40s and more to do with his ability to pick the right fights and opponents to mitigate the things he was unable to do as a man in his mid-40s. Indeed, after comfortably beating McGowan in 2022, Martinez continued to box at the same sort of level, winning twice more, and few took exception to him operating this way, with the danger effectively minimized. Often it's about knowing your place and your limitations. Just as a 45-year-old man will, or should, feel less inclined to prowl nightclubs on a Saturday night, so too should a 45-year-old pro boxer know better than to think he can still mix it with young world champions on a Saturday night. In other words, grow old gracefully, or at least safely, and nobody appears to have a problem. Why else, for example, would someone like Oliver McCall still be allowed to box in 2025? 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He had done so not because he was the world's best lightweight, but instead because he was the smartest. He knew when to fight, who to fight, and how to fight as a man in his 40s. That he never boxed for a world title was a regret of Marsili's, yet it could also be argued that it contributed to him staying unbeaten for so long. 'I turned professional quite late at 27, and at the time my goal was to become Italian champion and nothing more,' he explained. 'The difference between me and other boxers is that I spent a long time training and sparring on the same team as Sandro Casamonica, Gianluca Branco and Stefano Zoff when they were fighting for either European titles or world titles. I would do lots of sparring with them and learn a lot. 'I also live very well. If you don't, you will not be fighting for the European title at 47. Most days I go to bed at nine o'clock and then wake up early. Thanks to my family, I have been able to keep straight and lead this kind of life.' Marsili's first and only loss came against Gavin Gwynne, a fighter from Wales, in December 2023. The enduring image from that night is one of Marsili sitting on his stool between rounds eight and nine, unable to continue on account of a shoulder injury. He was, through eight rounds, winning the fight on two of the three scorecards, yet was eventually defeated by his own body. Not his brain. Not his technique. Just his body. 'Mentally I am better now [at 47],' Marsili said. 'I am more experienced and calmer; I take time to make decisions and I am clever. But physically you lose the resistance you had before when you were young.' Emiliano Marsili, 47, reacts to defeat after suffering an injury against Gavin Gwynne on December 01, 2023 in London, England. (James Chance via Getty Images) The same year that Emiliano Marsili's body quit on him, Scotland's Willie Limond experienced something similar when he was pulled out after eight rounds in the company of former three-weight world champion Ricky Burns. It was the second fight of Limond's comeback and only then, at 45, did he acknowledge that there was a limit to what his body could do and achieve. In his first fight back, a scheduled six-rounder against CJ Wood, there were no such revelations. In fact, when stopping Wood inside three rounds, Limond felt like a man reborn. He had by that point forgotten the pain of training for the fight. 'I was out running the other day and was three miles into a seven-mile run when I thought to myself, 'What the f**k am I doing this for?'' he said back then. 'I called my manager and said, 'I think I'm going to have to call this off.' It was just one of those days.' He had even forgotten the reason for doing the fight in the first place. He had forgotten how, rather than trigger a comeback, that six-rounder against Wood in 2023 was supposed to just offer Willie the chance to box on the same bill as his son, Jake. He had forgotten the initial promise: One more and that's it. 'It's more than likely this will be the last one,' Limond said beforehand. 'I last fought three years ago and haven't done a lot of training since. 'If something good gets offered to me after this fight, that could change my mind. But, right now, this is my last fight.' Then he won that 'last fight' and was reminded how it felt to win. After three years without it, now it was back. Now he understood the difference between watching his boys win fights — one as a pro, the other as an amateur — and experiencing the same feeling for himself. Now he understood the real reason why he had wanted to return. 'I'll struggle,' he said of retirement, 'because I've always been about it. I've got a job with Boxing Scotland [the national organization for boxing in Scotland] and train four pros, including my boy, but participating and watching are two different things. Willie Limond (R) and son Jake Limond (L) during a press conference ahead of the Willie Limond vs. Joe Laws fight at the Emirates Arena, on February 1, 2024, in Glasgow, Scotland. (Ross MacDonald - SNS Group via Getty Images) 'I know when it's over I'll be sad. But I also know how old I am and know it doesn't get any better. Anything I haven't achieved in boxing is not going to be achieved now in my 40s. I have to be realistic about that.' Yet it was never a specific achievement Limond still chased in his 40s. It was something else; something he couldn't find or feel elsewhere. He got it against Wood, he got it against Burns, and he was in pursuit of it again in a third comeback fight against Joe Laws — scheduled for May 3, 2024 — when he suffered a seizure in his car driving home from the gym on April 6. He was found unresponsive inside his vehicle that Saturday morning and was immediately taken to Monklands Hospital in Airdrie, Scotland, where he died nine days later. He was just 45 years of age. 'I know a lot of people have said it's because of brain damage from the boxing, but it hasn't got anything to do with it,' said Jake Limond, Willie's son. 'If I was looking at a 45-year-old guy who had 50 fights, and a lot of them had been wars, I would probably think it was the boxing, too. But that's why we were all shocked. It wasn't the boxing that done this. It was literally just a pure random occurrence. If he stopped boxing 10 years ago, or if he had never taken the Joe Laws fight [in May], it wouldn't have mattered. The same thing would have happened.' In Scotland the Limond name lives on, proof once more that a boxer's name is the last thing to go. 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