GOP Senator Josh Hawley vs. Walmart

Freshman GOP U.S. Senator for the state of Missouri Josh Hawley recently made headlines over his engagement in a Twitter ‘flame-war’ with the Walmart corporation. The reason for this controversy stems from Sen. Hawley’s announcement on Dec. 30th that he will object to the Presidential electors allotted from the Nov. 3rd election on Jan. 6th when the U.S. congress and senate must formally vote to confirm the results of the Nov. 3rd election (or not). 

Sen. Hawley’s reasons for objecting to the vote, Hawley said: 

“I cannot vote to certify the electoral college results on January 6 without raising the fact that some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws. And I cannot vote to certify without pointing out the unprecedented effort of mega-corporations, including Facebook and Twitter, to interfere in this election, in support of Joe Biden,” the Missouri Republican said in a statement. “At the very least, Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections. But Congress has so far failed to act.”

Sen. Hawley’s decision to object to the electoral college vote flies in the face of Senate Majority Mitch McConnell’s request to his GOP senators not to object and simply to pass the electoral college votes without question, a request which has drawn significant criticism from commentators. 

The Sen. Hawley-objection saga took an unexpected turn, however, when Walmart wandered into the fray: the corporate giant’s official Twitter account targeting Hawley for his decision, referring to the freshman Senator as a ‘sore loser.’

Within a few minutes, Walmart deleted the retweet and has since apologized to Senator Hawley; claiming that the Tweet was sent out mistakenly by a disgruntled employee who mistakenly forgot to sign out of the corporate, main account before writing the Tweet.

This story may indeed be the true account on Walmart’s end, however, it didn’t Hawley from firing back on Twitter at the retail titan, requesting they apologize for essentially using slave labour, as well as paying their employees terrible wages. 

Interestingly and amusingly, Sen. Hawley’s and his supporters in the brief spat with the Walmart corporation garnered some left-wing bi-partisan support, a rare occurrence in recent years. 

As Hawley’s traditional and expected, right-wing political supporters rallied around him in a call to ‘boycott Walmart,’ the call to action was met with online complaints from leftwingers, essentially with the point that Hawley’s complaints against Wal-mart were the same they’d had for years.