Josh Hawley Responds To Publisher Axing His Book Deal: “Could Not Be More Orwellian”
UPDATED with Hawley response: Senator Josh Hawley responded Thursday to what he called “the woke mob” at Simon & Schuster, which earlier in the day announced it was canceling publication of his upcoming book, calling the move “Orwellian.”
“This is not just a contract dispute. It’s a direct assault on the First Amendment, Only approved speech can now be published. This is the Left looking to cancel everyone they don’t approve of. I will fight this cancel culture with everything I have. We’ll see you in court,” he tweeted.
Publisher Simon & Schuster announced it will no longer publish Hawlye’s The Tyranny of Big Tech after “witnessing the disturbing, deadly insurrection that took place yesterday in Washington, D.C.”
“As a publisher, it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints: at the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom,” the publisher, which is in the process of being sold by ViacomCBS to Penguin Random House, said.
The Missouri senator, a staunch ally of President Donald Trump, was among the most aggressive in opposing the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral college victory. He apparently sent a fundraising appeal yesterday at the height of the siege of the Capitol Building by Trump supporters, egged on by the President, where a woman was killed. His hometown paper, The Kansas City Star, said in a editorial that Hawley “has blood on his hands.”
When lawmakers returned to work after hours of mayhem, Hawley was one of only a handful of senators who objected to Biden’s win in Georgia and Pennsylvania — the traumatic events of the day having convinced a number of his colleagues to back off the debunked claims.
His book (which will likely still be published elsewhere) was set to come out in June.
Simon & Schuster has most recently publisher Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough as well as Rage by Bob Woodward and The Room Where It Happened, by John Bolton. It has also published books by Roger Stone, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity.
The book blurb that is still on the publisher’s website says Hawley “argues that big tech companies—Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Apple—represent the gravest threat to American liberty since the monopolies of the Gilded Age, and proposes a democratic, hopeful path forward.”
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