One day after footage was released of U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., fleeing the Senate Chamber as rioters supporting former President Donald Trump overtook the the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the senator vowed not to run from voters.
Then his former opponent across the aisle vowed to spread his words.
On Saturday afternoon, former Sen. Claire McCaskill shared a video first posted by the Democratic National Committee.
“I am not backing down. I’m not going to apologize. I’m not going to cower. I’m not going to run from you,” Hawley said at the beginning of the video.
The clip is from Hawley’s speech Friday at a conference in Florida, hosted by Turning Point USA, a conservative group. Then the speech cut off and a montage of the senator running down a hall on Jan. 6 played along with music.
“This is important to get out to as many people as possible,” McCaskill wrote on Twitter.
McCaskill, a Democrat elected to the senate in 2012, was later defeated by Hawley — then Missouri’s attorney general — in 2018.
The U.S. House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol initially released the footage of Hawley on Thursday, which included video of him running down the steps to the Senate subway.
The video has since been held up beside an image of Hawley taken earlier that same day, as he confidently raised his fist to protesters who later violently broke into the U.S. Capitol building.
