Saving the American Family with Josh and Erin Hawley
Washington D.C. is a modern Sodom and Gomorrah that is best avoided. But if Conservatives are going to change the country, some of them are going to have to live there. Senator Josh Hawley and his wife Erin of the Alliance Defending Freedom describe the challenges of raising three children in the nation's capital. Then, both of them dig into censorship at Twitter and the battle to protect families in a time where gay marriage, abortion, and trans rights have become modern sacraments.Support the show: http://www.charliekirk.com/supportSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Family Life and Work Trips00:04:51
Hey, everybody, a special conversation with Senator Josh Hawley and his wife Erin Hawley about Dobbs, the U.S. Senate, and more.
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Here we go.
Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
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Senator Hawley and Aaron Hawley, welcome to the program.
Thank you.
It is awesome, but unusual to have a couple on.
But you guys have your own podcast too.
We do, right?
So first, tell us about that.
Well, it's called the Aaron Hawley Show.
This is the Erica Kirk Show.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, you say.
Tell them how we came up with the idea.
Sure.
So we wanted to do something together, something kind of for fun, and got to thinking about, you know, what it is that we think really matters about life.
And so why not talk about those things and talk about them together?
And it's been really fun to think about those things and talk about those things with.
Our marriage and kids and family.
It's the things, Charlie, when I think about what your message to students, I heard you say a lot of times, is, hey, you know, here's a radical thought.
Why don't you go get married?
Why don't you aspire to be married and maybe aspire to have a family, you know, and why don't you invest in those things?
And we thought, well, we say that stuff, but maybe we should talk about it.
And live it out.
And so we try to talk a little bit, you know, candidly about, oh, well, here's what our lives look like, our three kids.
And then talk about other people who are doing it, who we admire and stuff like that.
So I meet way too many politicians.
I really appreciate you because you're a real person.
And so many politicians I meet, they totally dysfunctional marriages, honestly, and also really weird, creepy personal lives.
And so, but how do you guys keep it together?
I mean, D.C. is like the worst place to be monogamously married in the country.
I mean, it's just, I'm just curious.
You couldn't pay me enough money to have a family in Washington, D.C. That's how we felt too.
But you go.
So I think we were actually sort of thinking about that when Josh was elected.
Do we take the family?
Do we not?
I did not want to move.
But we ended up sort of thinking about where we would spend the most quality time together.
And Josh is really good about coming home almost every night.
He gets to put the kids to bed.
He gets to read them stories, pray for them each night.
And of course, he's got work trips and those sorts of things, but he really prioritizes them in a way that I think makes family life very real and possible.
Yeah, and I just, here's my bottom line, Charlie, is that I am a husband and a father first.
And I mean, that's at the core of who I am.
So, you know, doing my job as a senator, you know, I'm not going to be able to do that unless I put my family at the center of what we're doing.
And so, you know, yeah, my kids are, when we're in Washington, Aaron and the kids are with me.
When we're home in Missouri, Aaron and the kids are with me.
And that's.
You guys are living then full-time in D.C.?
Yeah, we go back and forth together.
Wow.
I mean, so just since getting elected, I mean, just talk about some of the challenges.
I mean, I guess, I bet the campaign was actually probably even harder than, is that right?
Yeah.
Just because the campaign, you know, you're just, you're always on the road, particularly towards the end of the final months.
You know, I mean, you've been out on the trip.
Oh, yeah.
It's just, you know, you live on the bus, you know.
But what we did is we brought the kids with us.
And so for the final weeks of the campaign, of our first Senate campaign in 2018, we had all of us together on the bus.
You know, our son, Elijah, his birthday is in early November.
And so, you know, we did his birthday party on the bus.
We decorated the bus.
Of course, they think it's awesome.
Like, no car seats.
Like, are we just safe?
But, yes.
So we just try to bring our family into everything that we're doing as much as we can, you know, and bring the kids along if we can and just experience it together as a family.
Well, it's refreshing.
And so on that kind of theme of families, it seems that just like the Washington, D.C. Uniparty is increasingly hostile to families.
Assault on the Constitution00:11:10
And I mean, just recently, there was this, I call it the Disrespect for Marriage Act that was passed by too many Republicans and then signed into law by Biden, who then invites, honestly, a freak to the White House.
I don't know if you saw it or not, but this like drag whatever person, which was inexcusable.
So just talk about that, Senator.
And then, Aaron, I'd love your thoughts.
I mean, the idea of the nuclear family as we know it, which is one man, one woman raising children, is now considered radical.
In fact, we had to be virtue signaled by seemingly half the Republicans in D.C. to believe in such a concept.
Yeah.
You know, I will just say, Charlie, you think about that bill.
Here's my problem with that bill: it doesn't make any change to same-sex marriage, which the Supreme Court found wrongly, in my view.
I mean, my view is the Constitution, it says nothing about it.
It does not command same-sex marriage in all 50 states.
That's not in the Constitution.
But this bill is worse even than that.
This bill goes beyond that.
And what it does is it gives liberal activists the right to sue people of faith, colleges, churches, church organizations, church groups.
It gives them the right to sue them and to go after them for not participating in a same-sex wedding ceremony, for not serving.
Oh, it's in there.
It's called a private right of action, legal right.
So, I mean, that's really what we're talking about.
Is it now a protected class similar to the Civil Rights Act?
It's not quite there yet.
I mean, Aaron, being the brilliant legal mind, I mean, is that now a protected class like races and religion?
So, I think you're certainly going to see that argument made by liberal activists.
I think arguably those two things are very different.
We have the 14th Amendment for a reason, which is part of our Constitution, that says, you know, the equal protection clause that every person shall be treated equally regardless of race.
So, that's a specific thing that we fought a civil war over, a horrible history of slavery, and those sorts of things.
So, I think race is different, but I do think you might see those arguments.
No, but they've been asking for a while to just get an attachment on the Civil Rights Act to lifestyle.
Totally.
And that's what it is, right?
It's like my lifestyle now needs to be basically the moral premise of the 14th Amendment is how God made you should not be a, you shouldn't, it should not be legal to discriminate against somebody based on how God made you, right?
Absolutely.
And so, if you make a certain lifestyle choice, and also if you have a religious conviction that says, you know what, we don't believe in homosexual marriage here, is that now going to be put into suspense, right?
I mean, these are seismic questions.
Yeah, and I think the fact now that Congress has passed a law that says that blesses same-sex marriage and adopts it as national policy, I think, Charlie, you're going to have a lot of people going into court and saying, see, there's a compelling interest, they're a protected class.
Congress has said so.
And so, you know, I'm worried about it.
I'm really.
It will be 90 days, 120 days before the human rights campaign, and the ACLU goes in, because they go plaintiff shopping, that's what they do, and then they go judge shopping, right?
So it's going to be somewhere in like Colorado or Portland, right?
Where they find a church or a private school that has a statement of faith that says something like this, right?
I mean, I know of an example.
Boy, I don't remember the name of the school.
I just met him, and I met with him for like 20 minutes, super sweet guy.
He's on the board of a Christian college in downtown Seattle.
And ADF might actually be involved in this in some way, where they have a statement of faith that says we believe in one man, one woman marriage, and the Attorney General of Washington is suing them for LGBTQ discrimination.
The same fervor, the same language.
They're copy-pasting the Civil Rights Act stuff to that.
And it's absurd.
In the Masterpiece Cake decision involving the Colorado Baker, the court was clear that views about marriage between one man and one woman are decent and honorable.
But that's not what you see from the State Attorney General.
And that was just, that was recent.
That was a recent decision with the U.S. Supreme Court.
So you think...
Yeah, exactly, Charlie.
You see how it's moving.
When the court came up with same-sex marriage and said, oh, it's required in the Constitution, they said, but we're not saying that people of faith should be forced to observe or participate in those ceremonies.
And now that the line keeps moving, now it's moving, and now Congress is saying, oh, actually, we're going to make a federal statute and bless this and call it national policy and give people the right to sue if you don't go along with it.
So it's bad.
It's a bad law.
It's really bad.
And I was too bad to see too many, I was sad to see so many Republicans vote on it.
So I want to ask you guys, I mean, either one of you, just about generally kind of the assault on the U.S. Constitution that we're seeing.
Aaron, I'd love your thoughts.
I mean, you do a lot of different cases.
I don't know what part of law is your expertise, but I mean, we have seen this unaccountable fourth branch of government now for the last couple of years.
I believe it to be just largely unconstitutional, going after private property rights, outsourcing speech.
So let me ask you a direct question, not an abstract one, okay?
How is it constitutional for the FBI to go to Twitter and say, hey, I want you to censor Charlie Kirk?
It's not.
Okay.
Thank you.
So we have our First Amendment.
I got out of the clouds and I got into something.
And of course, the First Amendment has what's called a state action requirement.
So that means that some government has to be involved in some capacity.
But when you have the FBI, which is the government's preeminent law enforcement authority, telling one of the major companies that has basically a monopoly on speech to do something, it's arguable you do have that state action requirement met.
So certainly bad policy and very arguably unconstitutional.
Particularly, Charlie, when you look at the Twitter files revelations, and you got the FBI, this is what they're doing with their time, by the way.
Are they out there prosecuting criminals?
No.
Are they out there?
Protecting pregnancy care centers?
No.
What they're doing is they're like, oh, oh, these 10 people made jokes about Joe Biden or Hunter Biden or the 2020 that we don't like.
American citizens, by the way, not foreign nationals, American citizens, please Twitter go and deplatform them.
For some of them, they requested personal location information for these folks.
I mean, this is incredible stuff.
And we know it's happening.
We know it's even worse than this because we've had whistleblowers come to me from the Department of Homeland Security and say, that disinformation board that you read about, that's the tip of the iceberg.
In fact, the censorship campaign goes across the department.
It goes across multiple federal agencies, and it's all about tracking American citizens and American First Amendment speech.
It really is.
And for something like the Disinformation Board to even be a concept in government is absurd.
It's absurd.
And, you know, Josh, Senator, I should say, it's, you know, Josh is good.
That's okay.
I'm going to try to be proper.
I'm in a t-shirt here.
Well, there you go.
That's where that's all right.
Josh.
I'll be honest, just speaking for my audience, our audience is mad and also just so cynical.
Yeah.
Because what they did was illegal and what?
What are they going to get?
You know, another private jet ride to the Adirondacks or something?
Right.
I mean, these people are criminals.
I mean, when the government endorses crime or participates in crime, everything falls apart.
Yeah.
Right?
I mean, it's not like they didn't fill out some paperwork, you know, correctly or, you know, kind of little stuff like slap on the wrist.
We're talking about meeting after meeting this Elvis Chan guy, who, by the way, has his pronouns in his email.
I don't know if you saw that or not.
No, just like the great middle finger to us all, right?
Like Elvis Chan in his communications with Twitter has the he, his, him just on the bottom.
Just like, that's what the FBI makes sure that's so neatly put in there, right?
Is that people are mad.
People are cynical.
I mean, how do we hold them accountable, you know, at all?
Or is it just more hearings and we hope it gets better?
Well, there need to be hearings because that's the lever that right now we're going to have with the House of Representatives.
So there need to be subpoenas.
And it shouldn't be just, you know, there's levels of this, Charlie, but it should just be like, hey, if you could have, if you could make some time for us, you know, come and testify.
It ought to be fit you into our schedule.
Exactly.
And because the answer is always no, by the way.
And you just referenced a second ago the fact that the FBI director actually left a Senate oversight hearing this past year early, refused to answer questions funded by us so he could get on his Gulf Stream and go for a family vacation, which he lied about to the committee.
He said, oh, I've got important business.
Yeah, yeah, Senator Grassley, I got important business.
Counterterrorism work, which, by the way, that plane is supposed to be only for counterterrorism stuff.
That's what it's for.
And so he got on his plane.
What needs to happen is the House needs to issue subpoenas and say, appear.
They need to issue subpoenas for documents and say, give them to us.
And they need to make it all public.
This needs to be done in public.
So the American people, what happens is the corporate media tries to suppress all of this.
They won't report it.
This is why the Twitter files are important.
This needs to be done out in the open.
People need to see for themselves.
And then people need to start being impeached.
I mean, that's what really.
I totally agree.
The head of DHS needs to be impeached.
Garland needs to be impeached.
Christopher Wray.
I mean, these guys have, they have violated their oaths.
They have lied to Congress and misled Congress repeatedly.
There need to be consequences for it.
And those are the consequences.
Any thoughts, Aaron?
You agree.
Yes.
So, Aaron, I want to make sure I mention this, and then I want to close on just some general thoughts on the terms.
You were one of the main leaders behind the Dobbs case.
Is that correct?
Tell us about that.
Sure.
So I was privileged to serve as counsel to Mississippi in the Dobbs case on behalf of Alliance Defending Freedom and as the mom to three little ones.
It was really just an amazing experience.
I've told this story before.
When I first went down to meet with Mississippi's team, our daughter, Abigail, was about six months old.
And I was like, I can't go.
I've got a baby.
And so ADF said, just bring her.
And it was this really incredible, also really hard experience having her there.
My babysitter hadn't arrived yet.
So we were rushing, trying to get her to sleep.
And she falls asleep.
And we're discussing the ins and out of what legal argument will appeal to which justices.
What will Justice Kavanaugh?
What will Justice Barrett?
What will the Chief Justice think?
These are the justices that are really crucial to getting a decision in our favor.
And Abigail wakes up screaming, just bloody murder.
And on the one hand, it's a little embarrassed.
Like, sorry, guys.
But on the other hand, she was just this incredible picture of why the case matters.
Red hair, chubby cheeks.
But the reality is, as we've talked about, she's not any more precious, any more loved by God than any other child.
And each and every one of them are deserving of life.
And that's at bottom what Dobbs is about.
They're the kind of midterm elections, Senator.
What's your big take on that?
That you can't expect people to come and vote for you if you're a Republican if you just say, the other side sucks and it's my turn.
As it turns out, guess what?
Voters actually want to have some confidence in you.
They want you to have an agenda.
They want you to tell them how you're going to fight for them.
And I can only speak for Senate Republicans.
Senate Republicans, if you look at the record of the last couple years, I mean, it's not inspiring.
Why would anybody vote for sell out to Big Pharma on insulin, sell out to Chuck Schumer on the Second Amendment, sell out to the radical climate activists on their Green New Deal, which is what the infrastructure bill was.
Voters Want an Agenda00:03:42
I mean, that gives Zelensky $100 billion while our border is wide open.
Precisely the most insane thing.
Thank you for your good votes on that, by the way.
It's so beyond, just every normal, everyday people, forget D.C.'s awful.
They don't understand this Ukraine thing at all.
$100 billion to a corrupt regime while our border is getting invaded.
With no strings attached, as you said, no oversight.
And now we're to the point, Charlie, on that, since you got me started on it.
We're actually literally just writing checks to the Ukrainian government to their treasury.
Here you go.
We're just funding their general.
It's outrageous.
It's outrageous.
Meanwhile, if you want to talk about foreign adversaries, China is running rampant in Asia.
And what are we doing?
Not what we should be because we're bailing out the Europeans.
By the way, what are our European allies and friends doing for Ukraine?
Not half of what we're doing, practically.
It's ridiculous.
Yeah, and so I totally agree that, look, a lot of Republicans stayed home or they just said, what's the point?
And there was a lot of cynicism.
And it's growing because we have Mitch McConnell, who is awful and has done a lot of damage to our country.
And we have all these other people that are in the kind of Republican Party.
And I think we had some good candidates.
I wish Blake Masters would have won.
I'm so glad JD Vance won, which is kind of one of the great wins.
And he'll be a great partner with you on this stuff.
So it wasn't all bad.
But, you know, also just from kind of a structural standpoint, what are your thoughts on embracing in-person early voting, right?
Like, we, as Republicans, always try to build a movement.
Always.
Yeah.
And they just have a machine.
Yeah.
Movements can beat machines.
We did it in 16.
Yeah.
But not always.
Yeah.
Wouldn't it be nice if we have a movement and a machine?
Yeah.
Well, my view is that state by state, I mean, look, you got to take the rules of the state as they're given, and then you've got to play by those rules and win by those rules.
So, I mean, I love our law in Missouri.
I think our vote owners are great.
I commend those.
If states want a model, I say, look what we do in Missouri.
It's great.
Our elections are secure.
They're fair.
You know your results quickly.
You know your results quickly.
Imagine that on the day of the election.
This is election day, not election month.
Oh, we're here in Maricopa County.
As we sit here.
But I would just say this, Charlie, that you know what?
The elections are what they are.
The laws are what they are.
And, you know, in states like Arizona or others, it's just like, hey, listen, where we don't have the chance to change the law right now.
It's like, you got to play by the rules that are written, and you want to win by those rules legally and fairly.
But I think to that end, what I'm getting at is we're places where early voting, like here in Arizona, where early voting is the overwhelming majority of the vote.
That's right.
We've got to find a way to go out there and win.
We're going to play by that game.
In closing, what gives you hope, both of you?
In D.C. or otherwise, D.C. doesn't certainly give me hope.
I think for us, family.
And, you know, we've got blessed to have a beautiful family, but that's what the American Dream is all about.
The idea that husband and wife can come together, build work, but also just provide for children.
You know what else gives me hope, Charlie, is just talking to seeing the thousands of students that are here thousands of students who are people of courage, who are people of conviction, who are people of honor and integrity, and they want their lives to matter.
That gives me great hope.
We overturned Roe versus Wade, and we liberated Twitter, and we got the House back.
It's a good year.
Pretty good.
Pretty good.
It doesn't matter if Fetterman's going to the Senate.
That one really bothers me, I'm going to be honest.
Katie Hobbs and Fetterman are the two.
I'm going to pretend that didn't happen.
God bless the Hawley family.
Thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
Thanks.
Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
Email me your thoughts as always, freedom at charliekirk.com.
Thanks so much for listening, and God bless.
For more on many of these stories and news you can trust, go to CharlieKirk. com.