“THAT IS THE SPIRIT OF THE HOLOCAUST”: Sen. Josh Hawley SLAMS Dems Who Refuse to Condemn Antisemitic Violence

Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), who serves on the Senate Committees on the Judiciary; Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs; Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions; and Small Business and Entrepreneurship, joined The Guy Benson Show today to discuss the tragic murder of two Israeli embassy workers in Washington, D.C. by a pro-Hamas protester. He condemned the lack of response from Democrats like Ilhan Omar, calling out what he sees as a disturbing silence in the face of antisemitic violence. Hawley also weighed in on the passage of Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” praising the widespread tax relief it delivers and outlining how he believes federal spending can still be cut without sacrificing Medicaid for truly struggling Americans. Listen to the full interview below!

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Read the full (automated) transcript below:

Ben Domenech: The deaths of two young Israeli diplomats attending an event here in D.C. Last night has actually shook the system, I think, in a way that is going to lead to all sorts of consequences, ramifications that we are just going to be learning about, I believe, in the coming days and weeks, as the issue of anti-Semitism now takes the main stage in terms of a conversation that has now come to the nation’s capital in a ways it has not before, but seems now inevitable. And joining me now to discuss this and more is Missouri Senator Josh Hawley. Thanks so much for taking the time to join me today, Senator. What was your initial reaction when you saw this terrible news?

Sen. Hawley: Well, horror to begin with. Thanks for having me, Ben. It’s great to be on with you, but it just absolutely was horrified by it. One of the victims, Sarah Milgram, is from the Kansas City area, on the Kansas side of it, but very close. To to an area where I went to high school. I know well, so this is there’s there’s a personal feel to this I’ve heard from so many members of the Jewish community Just this morning about the shockwaves that this is sending you think about this This is a brazen act of murderous violence in the nation’s capital. And while it wasn’t broad daylight, it was pretty close I mean this was this wasn’t like it was 3 a.m. And it was some you know, some random mugging now This was targeted. This was deliberate This was really an act of terrorism and I think it speaks volumes and not good volumes about where we are right now in terms of the brazenness of the anti-Israel, anti-American movement in this country, which is turning increasingly violent, increasingly murderous and needs to be confronted.

Ben Domenech: You know, I think we hear a lot of platitudes often in the wake of something like this, that this is unacceptable, you know. I mean, and obviously in the moment, those are the kind of responses you expect from people like Mayor Bowser and others. But what does it really mean to say that this something that is unacceptable? What is the government able to do and what do you think it should be doing to make sure that this type of anti-Semitic terror is not tolerated, is not allowed, and is really battled in America?

Sen. Hawley: Well, number one, and I say this as a former prosecutor, you prosecute the heck out of the perpetrator. I mean, you go out there and you prosecuted him to the fullest extent of the law. And there’s an advantage to having a trial and putting this guy on trial. You get all the evidence about his beliefs, his motivation, what it is that he is committed to. And I understand he was involved with various radical left groups. He was chanting free Palestine as he was shooting, apparently. And people need to understand where these ideologies lead to, where these radical anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, anti American ideologies, they end in violence and murder. So you’ve got to prosecute this guy, you’ve gotta put him away for life, you gotta make clear what it is he stands for. And then we’ve gotta draw the line, I mean, this same murderous ideology, let’s just be honest, has been flourishing on America’s so-called elite college campuses. I mean he had the president of Columbia apologizing, groveling really just a few days ago in public talking about how horrible it was that the pro-Hamas student to the graduate student to Trump administration kicked out, how he couldn’t be here because of free speech. This is garbage. We need to say clearly that when you are advocating for violence, it is a crime. You can’t advocate for violence, number one, but number two. Even if your speech is protected by the First Amendment, it is morally reprehensible to call for the slaughter of Jewish Americans or Jews anywhere. There’s something really sick about that, and we’ve got to speak with moral clarity.

Ben Domenech: Some of your colleagues in the Senate on the Democratic side were going after Secretary Rubio this week about topics related to this, about the issues related to kicking some of these people out who are on student visas and the like. How do you find the right balance there of honoring America’s tradition of free speech, but also recognizing that some of these people are here on purpose to agitate, on purpose, to create and foment the kind of terror that we saw happen on the streets of D.C. Last night.

Sen. Hawley: Yeah, and it’s that lighter category of people who don’t have any business being in this country. And I just reiterate that when you’re here on a visa, you’re there as a guest. And by the way, our law, perfectly consistent with the First Amendment, our laws says that the United States government, if you’re on a Visa… Student visa, the United States government can expel you if you present a danger to the United States as either to our citizens or to our security interests. And I just argue if you are on campus stirring up violent riots, if you were on campus encouraging people to break the law, and if you’re on campus advocating for terrorist organizations, You shouldn’t be here. And I don’t have any qualms about saying, sorry, you do that garbage, you’re out, you are gone. You are not an American citizen, you are gone, you go home. I think we’ve got to be real clear about that. And to have the left, now all of a sudden the left have decided that they are free speech absolutists. These are the people who were just saying just a hot minute ago, oh, misinformation isn’t protected by the First Amendment. Now suddenly they think everything is First Amendment speech, it’s just ridiculous.

Ben Domenech: You know there has not been a lot of response to this shooting yet from your colleagues on the hill One such non-response came from Ilhan Omar cut 12

Sen. Hawley: Congresswoman Omar, can I get your reaction to the shooting that happened in D.C. Last night?

Ben Domenech: For now? So that’s the kind of attitude that they have toward this. I’m just gonna go for now, I’m not gonna say anything. Why do you think that they’re so reluctant to call out something that is such an obvious problem on their side and only seems to be getting worse?

Sen. Hawley: Because they’re totally enthralled to it. I mean the ones who are who know it’s wrong I mean the members of Congress Democrats who know this is wrong are scared to speak out about it because They want the votes and the money and so they’re they’re Totally cowed by it and then you’ve got a segment of them who are partakers in this ideology I mean again, let’s just be honest. You’ve got people probably like Ellen Omar who believe it They believe that Israel is an apartheid state, is a corrupt state. They believe Israel should be wiped off the face of the map. And they have, you know, the best you can say about that wing of the Democrat party is, boy, they sure like to play footsie with people who are murderers and who are terrorists. I mean, this is a huge, huge problem for them. And this is why moral clarity is absolutely vital. And whether it’s left or right, I don’t care where you locate yourself on the spectrum. When you’re calling for the destruction of the state of Israel, that is the spirit of apartheid. That is the Spirit of Holocaust. That’s what we have got to call out and reject wherever it comes from. And again, this is a basic issue of speaking with moral purpose.

Ben Domenech: You know one other area that likes to play footsie with this obviously is the media and I and I got the and Appreciated the Josh Hawley retweet this morning I had posted last night late at one in the morning the shooter shouted free Palestine and I did it for Gaza So motives will tomorrow be reported as unclear and then sure enough the New York Times this morning FBI seeks motive after two Israeli and the embassy aides are killed Why can’t the media be honest about this, especially when the person is literally yelling it as they are arrested?

Sen. Hawley: Yeah, it’s really pretty sickening. I mean, to be honest with you. And it’s obvious what the motivation was. This person wanted to kill Jews. If you could kill American Jews so much the better. And you can’t ever make progress on this until you’re willing to tell people the truth. This is why nobody trusts the legacy media anymore. Whether we’re talking about Joe Biden’s health or whether we’re talking about the motivations of these killers, they just won’t be honest when it doesn’t suit their political agenda. And, you know, they’ve got a big problem on the left. And if we allow this to fester, we’re going to have a big problem in this country with these people, again, who hide behind the idea that, oh, well, every viewpoint is equal. No, it’s not. Every viewpoint is not equal when you’re calling for the slaughter of innocents. And we’ve got to be clear on that.

Ben Domenech: I do want to take the time to talk about what’s gone on on Capitol Hill over the past couple of days. We’ve seen this big, beautiful bill come together on the House side with a bunch of trading of different sides when it comes to what the salt Republicans wanted. I don’t like to call them moderates. What the fiscal hawks, the last few of them that hold out there in the House, wanted What is your perspective on that bill now that it’s gotten to this point? And what are your chief concerns about it as it comes over to the Senate?

Sen. Hawley: Well, no, it really gives the Senate the runway to work. I mean, this puts the ball into our court, allows us to get to work, and there’s a lot of work to do, and we need to move quickly. So my view is that we’ve got to adhere to what the president’s priorities are, what he ran on, what he won on, what he promised the country, which is, number one, a working class tax cut. No taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime, no taxes of Social Security. I think we also need to give every working family in this country with kids a big tax cut, these are our voters, They have been absolutely pummeled by Joe Biden for four years. No working family. Nobody could afford anything in this country. Gas, groceries, rent. They need relief. We need to deliver it to them. I think the president’s been strong on that we need to protect Medicaid benefits for working people. The president’s been very strong. I don’t need to roll back the Biden era spending. I mean, four trillion dollars on Green New Deal subsidies, on giveaways to China. I mean, it’s just absurd stuff that needs to be rolled back. I think we do that. It’ll be a great product for the American people.

Ben Domenech: I want to ask you about Medicaid for just a second, because I want clarify a little bit about your concerns, and some of them are more esoteric, an esoterica, policy concerns related to, you know, the payment processes and things like that. But when it comes to the workforce side of things, I know someone, a friend of mine, she works very hard in her job, a single mom. Her ex doesn’t work at all. He gets Medicaid, she works hard enough that she earns too much to get Medicaid. What is the situation that should happen to compel him with Medicaid to get back to work?

Sen. Hawley: There ought to be work requirements. I think there’s no doubt about that. I mean, this is something that the president’s been very clear on, strong on, I think is right. That’s certainly how we feel in Missouri. I mean listen, if you’re able-bodied… And you’re not working. You need to go work if you want to get Medicaid benefits. Now, I will tell you, Ben, in my state, over a million people in the state of Missouri, working class people, are getting Medicaid benefits where their kids are, and the vast majority of them are working. And nobody can afford private health insurance. That’s the underlying issue here that I think we’ve got to be real clear on and confront. This is why the president, I mean, I just talked to the president last night. He said to me, and I quote, “‘Josh, don’t touch Medicaid.'” And that’s what he’s getting at there. I mean he’s right about that. I agree with them 100%. But work requirements, illegal immigrants on Medicaid, that’s absurd, that’s ridiculous. There’s all kinds of fraud in every federal program. We should root that out. So I think there’s lots we can do to make sure that it is truly working folks who need it, who deserve it, who qualify for it, can get it. And listen, if we’re looking for stuff to cut, we could start with Joe Biden’s budgets from the last four years. Like I said, about $4 trillion in new spending, almost none of which is good for America. That’s where I’d go.

Ben Domenech: You know, when it comes to the issue of cutting spending, we obviously saw the way that Elon must change the conversation with Doge here in Washington. But now, what really matters going forward is making sure that cuts like that are permanent, as opposed to just something that happens briefly, and then the bureaucracy inevitably claws back that money they believe to be rightfully theirs that those greedy taxpayers are holding onto. Can be done to make sure that those cuts are made more permanent and not just something that goes away in under the change of an administration

Sen. Hawley: Well, you can do the kind of structural reform that I think the president is pursuing. I mean, take USAID, where Musk started, and then covered so much fraud and corruption and billions of dollars, billions wasted, you know, this is just in one fiscal year, So the president has overhauled USAID. He’s pursuing that in a number of these agencies. That kind of structure reform to, frankly, root out the bureaucracy, to turn the deep state on its head, I think is absolutely necessary. And then, you know, Congress ultimately is going to have to come in in these budgets that we pass and follow suit here and say, again, we’re not going to spend money on We’re not gonna spend money transgender operas in Peru anymore. And we’re doing that. And we are not going spend money in bureaucrats who don’t show up to work and on federal buildings that are empty because all these bureaucrats are allegedly working from We’re just not doing that anymore. And that, I think, is how you make it permanent. So you’ve got to pursue structural reform. President’s right to target that. You’ve got to transform the whole shape of the bureaucracy. And you’ve got make these programs that Americans are paying so much money for, all the tax money that goes into these. You got to make them actually work and deliver and do stuff. You know, I mean, we’ve got, I think FEMA, for example, this is fresh in my mind, because in Missouri, we’re grappling with huge natural disasters. You know, FEMA is such a catastrophe. I mean they don’t get the relief you need. They don’t get people on the ground. It takes forever to get them to do stuff. I kind of, those kind of bureaucracies, that has to change. There’s got to be structural change there.

Ben Domenech: Last question for you, Senator. I know that you care a great deal about the negative influence of China and the effect that it’s had on higher education through its Confucius centers and things like that over the years. In terms of the president and the administration’s policies toward higher ed at this moment, not just on the anti-Semitism question, what do you think about what they’re doing so far and what do they need to be doing that they aren’t yet?

Sen. Hawley: Well, I think that using the hammer of federal funding is the right thing to do when it comes to compliance with Title IX, for example, and you’ve got universities that are still saying, oh, no, we’re just going to go ahead and have biological men in women’s sports and in women locker rooms. It’s absurd. It’s a violation of federal law. Whether we’re talking about anti-Semitism on these campuses, as we were discussing earlier today, I mean, we need these campuses to come out. I’ll give you an example. The president of Yale was in my office not long ago, begging, of course, for money, more money. And so I asked her, I said, what are you doing to protect Jewish students on your campus? She looked at me like I had three heads. And she said, What do you mean? And I said what do I mean? I mean that your campus has looked like a Nazi rally at various points for the last three years. Like what are doing? She couldn’t name, I kid you not, she couldn’t named one thing. Why are these campuses getting billions of dollars with their massive endowments when they’re not following federal law, when they’re promoting open anti-Semitism and open anti Americanism? So I think that the president’s harder line is good. And ultimately, Ben, we’ve got to think about, do these colleges, should they really be able to get all of this money, including all this financial aid, and not be on the hook for it? I think universities should have to pay back at least part of student loans if their graduates can’t go out and get jobs. I mean, the universities gobble up the money, pad their endowments, and walk away with it. I mean it’s absurd, it’s a racket, and I think we’ve gotta start holding them accountable.

Ben Domenech: Absolutely. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me today. Senator, I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me.