Hawley breaks with Trump on Venezuela as policy rift continues

Of the five Senate Republicans who voted to curb President Donald Trump's war powers, one has closely aligned himself in rhetoric with the president, but has a history of breaking with him in a variety of policy areas.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., often touts his relationship with Trump and regularly vouches for many of his policy desires in the Senate. But he has a tendency to buck the president, be it on key votes or policy pushes, and ends up on the receiving end of a digital tongue-lashing from Trump.

Thursday’s vote to rebuke future military action against Venezuela was another instance where Hawley was at odds with a furious Trump, who charged that he and his colleagues, Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Todd Young, R-Neb., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Rand Paul, R-Ky., "should never be elected to office again." 

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Hawley quickly sought to do damage control while explaining his vote.

"I love the president. I think he’s doing a great job," he told reporters afterward. "I just think, when it comes to Venezuela, which is what we’re voting on today — I think that if the president should determine that he needed to put troops on the ground in a country, Venezuela, I just think in Article I, we would need to vote on that."

But Hawley has broken with Trump in several other areas, like on healthcare, unions and his push to ban stock trading in Congress.

The last time the president publicly berated the lawmaker was in July, when Hawley broke away from Republicans in a bid to get his Honest Act, originally named the PELOSI Act after the former House Speaker and her infamous stock portfolio, out of committee.

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Trump at the time called him a "second-tier Senator," and questioned why he would "pass a Bill that Nancy Pelosi is in absolute love with — He is playing right into the dirty hands of the Democrats."

The president’s anger in that situation was directed toward a version of the legislation that would have included himself and Vice President JD Vance as part of the stock trade ban, which he and Hawley later cleared up after the lawmaker made clear that the latest iteration of the bill explicitly exempted him.

There are other, quieter areas where Hawley has strayed from Trump’s policy desires.

Most recently, Hawley voted for Senate Democrats’ three-year extension of since-expired Obamacare premium subsidies. Though not a direct rebuke of the president, Trump made clear that he did not support a simple extension of the subsidies.

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Hawley also has differing views on unions compared to Trump, who signed two executive orders last year targeting federal labor unions. Still, he was skeptical of supporting a bill from Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, that would’ve reversed those orders.

"I don't know," Hawley told Fox News Digital at the time. "The public sector unions and private sector unions seem to be two different things."

Then there was Hawley’s public dissatisfaction with Trump’s "big, beautiful bill," over deep cuts to Medicaid that he and a handful of other Senate Republicans argued would have shuttered several rural hospitals throughout the country.

His anger was directed toward the lawmakers who crafted the healthcare portion, but in the moment, he threatened to vote against the legislation, which ultimately squeaked through the Senate with a single vote to spare.

"I think it was a huge mistake," Hawley said at the time. "I think this has been an unhappy episode here in Congress, this effort to cut Medicaid."

"And I think, frankly, my party needs to do some soul-searching," he continued. "If you want to be a working-class party, you've got to get delivered for working-class people. You cannot take away healthcare from working people."