Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) is under fire in his home state after being caught using a phony quote that he falsely attributed to Founding Father Patrick Henry.

Its so easy to be normal and nice, the Kansas City Star editorial board wrote . Hawley picked a different path.

Hawley on Independence Day tweeted a quote he claimed was from Henry saying the United States was founded on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Henry never said it, and Twitter users called out Hawley .

The Kansas City Star noted that the actual quote has racist and antisemitic origins. The paper said that while anyone can be fooled by a false quote online, this is part of a pattern from Hawley, who pulled a similar stunt last month on Juneteenth .

We find it remarkable that Hawley, an honors history major at Stanford University, keeps getting this wrong, the newspaper wrote. Its sloppy work by the senator.

The editorial continued:

The problem, we suspect, is that in both cases Hawley was less interested in truly celebrating freedom the ostensible reason we celebrate Juneteenth and Independence Day in the first place and instead wanted to make a spectacle of himself with right-wing tweets he knew would attract attention. He was peacocking.

Read the full editorial here.

Hawley a self-appointed expert in manliness once seen fleeing from the Jan. 6 rioters he had saluted hours earlier has not deleted the false tweet, nor has he apologized for it. Instead, he crowed on Wednesday that the libs are major triggered, then cranked out more religious quotes.