Senator Josh Hawley

They need to knock it off.

I mean, they need to quit persecuting these players.

They need to apologize to these players and they need to stop it.

Thank you for having me.

Well, I think it's absolutely outrageous that for years now, MLB has forced their players to turn their uniforms into billboards for the most controversial political messaging, endorsing the BLM movement, which is under investigation for fraud, by the way, endorsing the trans movement, trans rights and ideology.

And now when a couple of players who are religious believers want to write a Bible verse on their uniforms, they're told, oh, no, no, no.

way too controversial.

I tell you what it is.

It's a violation of the First Amendment to target religious believers in this way.

I think it's probably a violation of their labor contracts.

And for a sport that gets billions of dollars in handouts effectively from the federal government because they're exempt from the federal antitrust laws, I think it is a gross abuse of power and they ought to explain themselves.

Well, number one, they need to knock it off.

I mean, they need to quit persecuting these players.

They need to apologize to these players and they need to stop it.

Number two, they need to respond to me and tell the country why it is they think they have grounds to do this.

I wanna see all of the rules that have governed all of their political messaging for the last six years, where they've been forcing players to adopt and espouse explicitly political messages.

I wanna know all of the rules that have governed that.

I wanna know what the rules are now that they say prevent Bible verses, for heaven's sake, from being quoted.

And I want to know why they think that they can use their federal antitrust exemption in this way.

And I can tell you, if I don't get answers, and if the commissioner goes forward with disciplining so-called and fining these players, I'm going to ask him to come to Congress, take an oath, and explain himself to the country.