This week, after voting rights legislation failed once again in the Senate, President Joe Biden addressed questions about the legitimacy of the upcoming 2022 midterms.

Since Republicans lost the White House and Senate in 2020—including in typically red states like Georgia and Arizona—Republican state legislatures across the country have passed a slate of voter suppression laws designed to limit the participation of likely-Democratic voters such as communities of color and students.

The failed voting rights legislation designed to foil these efforts appears to have no chance of passing, which led Biden to say of 2022's legitimacy:

"I'm not going to say it's going to be legit. It's -- the increase and the prospect of being illegitimate is in direct proportion to us not being able to get these reforms passed."

Biden also noted that the 2020 election could've "easily" been illegitimate had then-Vice President heeded former President Donald Trump's calls to unilaterally toss the electoral votes of swing states Trump lost.

Republicans seized on Biden's answer, claiming he was trying to sow doubt in the legitimacy of the midterms, which prompted White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki to clarify via Tweet:

"Lets be clear: @potus was not casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2022 election. He was making the opposite point: In 2020, a record number of voters turned out in the face of a pandemic, and election officials made sure they could vote and have those votes counted. He was explaining that the results would be illegitimate if states do what the former president asked them to do after the 2020 election: toss out ballots and overturn results after the fact. The Big Lie is putting our democracy at risk. We’re fighting to protect it."

Nevertheless, far-right Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri appeared on Fox News to rail against Biden's comments.

Senator Hawley Joins Pete Hegseth on Fox News Primetimewww.youtube.com

Hawley told Pete Hegseth of Fox News:

“What I heard was what Joe Biden said loud and clear, which is he’s already making excuses for why he’s going to lose in November. That’s what all this is about: Democrats don’t accept elections that they don’t win. ... To try to say that whatever decision the American people come to in November is illegitimate because you don't think you're gonna like the outcome of it, boy, that is playing with fire."

The comments are stunning coming from Hawley, who was one of the very first Senators vowing to sign onto House Republicans' objections to the counting of electoral votes in swing states Trump lost, which forced the chambers to separately vote on the legitimacy of the electoral college results. Hawley repeatedly peddled Trump's fantasies that the 2020 election was somehow "stolen" and infamously raised his fist in solidarity with pro-Trump protesters outside the Capitol just hours before the deadly failed insurrection.

People were amazed at the Senator's hypocrisy.

People haven't forgotten the insurrection, nor have they forgotten Hawley's salute to Trump supporters outside the Capitol just before it.

In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Hawley defended politicos in his state who supposedly felt disenfranchised after Trump lost the election. Hawley said that, “These are not crazy people, these are reasonable people, who by the way, have been involved in politics. They’ve won, they’ve lost, they’ve seen it all. These are normal folks, living normal lives, who firmly believe they have been disenfranchised.”