Josh Hawley is discussed in The Bob Zadek Show as a political figure whose legislative and electoral actions are cited by guests as examples of government power that libertarians distrust. He does not appear as a guest in the excerpts, and no excerpt presents his own arguments in his voice. Instead, his name surfaces in three contexts: proposed regulation of social media content moderation, the structure of Facebook’s Oversight Board, and the congressional challenge to the 2020 electoral vote count.
Social media regulation and the “regulatory shakedown”
In a June 2019 episode, Bob Zadek and Professor Frank Buckley discussed growing calls for government regulation of social media censorship following high-profile “de-platforming” incidents. They characterized Senator Josh Hawley’s proposed legislation as a “regulatory shakedown” and explored Buckley’s alternative proposal for a disclosure-based commission to provide transparency without granting the government enforcement power Who Will Censure the Censors? (2019). The excerpt summary does not name the specific bill or its provisions, and the episode’s treatment of Hawley is limited to that characterization.
The Oversight Board as an alternative to regulation
A July 2020 episode returned to the same terrain, with Bob Zadek framing the discussion around Facebook’s creation of its Oversight Board as a response to the threat of government regulation. Zadek said that “Josh Hawley and others are getting a lot of attention” in hearings, and asked guest John Samples whether the Oversight Board was formed to preempt the need for government regulation Why Government Regulation of Tech Censorship is Undesirable (2020). Zadek described the board as a way for Facebook to tell government, “Don’t worry, I got you covered. I don’t need to be regulated.”
Samples, a member of the Oversight Board, explained that a social media site like Facebook cannot be a publisher, that content moderation is after the fact, and that the board was designed to give users trust and legitimacy in the task of taking down expression. He noted that Facebook “laid down $130 million for the first six years” and that board members cannot have their salary reduced or be removed for the judgments they make. Zadek emphasized Samples’s structural independence, comparing it to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and posed the choice for Americans and Facebook users: “who would you feel more protected by? John and his colleagues, or Josh Hawley and his colleagues?” The excerpt ends mid-sentence at a section break, with Zadek’s next line cut off.
The Electoral Count Act and the 2020 election
In an August 2022 episode, Ilya Somin discussed the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and the problems revealed by the 2020 election. He described vague aspects of the legislation that “Trump and others tried to exploit in 2020,” including uncertainty about when states must certify their votes and the possibility of state legislatures creating a different slate of electors after the fact The Libertarian Dream Team - Ilya Somin (2022). Somin also addressed the role of Congress and the vice president in certifying electoral votes, noting that what precipitated the events of January 6th was Congress meeting to certify the electoral votes sent by the states.
Somin said that some right-wing Republicans in Congress were saying they would refuse to certify the vote from Pennsylvania and other disputed states, and that Donald Trump pressured Vice President Mike Pence to refuse certain electoral votes on his own authority. Somin credited Pence with correctly deciding he did not have that authority even under the 1887 act, but said it was desirable to make that clearer. He then turned to the threshold for congressional challenges:
And finally, under the current rules, any time there is one senator or one member of the House of Representatives who’s willing to challenge any state’s electoral votes, that in itself is enough to trigger a process in Congress and to trigger a vote to potentially reject that. It would be desirable to raise that so it’s not enough to have sort of one rogue ambitious senator like Josh Hawley, who was the ringleader of this stuff on the Republican side. At the very least, you should have to have some significant percentage of members of Congress who are willing to start a challenge before you can initiate that.
Somin’s proposed reforms included requiring states to set their system for allocating electoral votes before Election Day, allowing judicial review of state officials’ certification decisions, and making clear that Congress can only refuse to recognize votes for a narrowly specified set of reasons and that the vice president cannot overturn results on his own authority. He argued that even those who like Trump and the Republican Party should recognize that similar shenanigans could be used by Democrats, and that it is ridiculous to assert that a vice president who was often a competitor in the election should have the right on his or her own authority to overturn electoral vote counts.
Across episodes
The excerpts show a consistent libertarian skepticism toward Josh Hawley’s uses of government power across three episodes, but the treatment does not develop in a single arc. In the 2019 and 2020 episodes, Frank Buckley and John Samples address Hawley’s proposed tech-censorship legislation and the Oversight Board alternative; in the 2022 episode, Ilya Somin addresses Hawley’s role in the electoral-vote challenge. The earlier episodes treat Hawley as a symbol of regulatory threat, while the later episode treats him as a specific actor in the January 6th events. The excerpts do not show the same question argued in more than one episode with a change in position; rather, they show different guests addressing different Hawley-related topics.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not include an interview with Josh Hawley or any statement in his own voice. They do not name the specific legislation he proposed, describe its provisions, or report its legislative status. They do not cover his broader record, his other policy positions, or his career before or after the events discussed. The excerpts also do not state the outcome of any reform to the Electoral Count Act or the final disposition of the January 6th certification process.