MSNBC host Joe Scarborough eviscerated Senator Joni Ernst for her “clueless” remarks on the impact of Medicaid cuts.
At a rowdy town hall in Iowa, a constituent told Ernst that Americans would die as a result of cuts to Medicaid in the GOP’s proposed budget bill.
“Well, we’re all going to die, so—for heaven’s sakes, folks,” Ernst said Friday, drawing rebuke from critics.
Ernst then followed up with a sarcastic apology in a video she released on Instagram Saturday, in which she walked through a graveyard.
“I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth. So I apologize,” she said. “I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well.”
Reacting to the non-apology on Morning Joe, host Scarborough tore into the senator for making jokes about constituents’ livelihoods that would be “gutted” by the cuts.
“When Joni Ernst is asked what she’s going to do about the fact that maybe 40 percent of children in the state of Iowa—her state—are going to be impacted by Medicaid cuts, and about 50 percent of seniors that are in nursing homes in her state are going to be impacted by these cuts,” Scarborough began. “Her response is: ‘Well, we’re all going to die anyway.’ And then she makes a joke about it in the graveyard.”
Scarborough said her tone-deaf remarks could be put in the dictionary next to the word “clueless.”
“I’m sure Webster’s dictionary wants to kind of use video in the future. Put that next to ‘clueless’ because that’s what these Republicans are right now,” he added. “They’re clueless. They’re savaging health care in their own districts, in their own states, and Joni Ernst feels confident enough not only to say: ‘Well, you’re going to die anyway.’”
“Then she feels confident enough that she can do whatever she wants to do, go into a graveyard and make jokes about how everybody’s going to die anyway,” Scarboro added.
Scarborough compared Ernst’s comments to her infamous “Make ’em Squeal” pledge, in which she promised to put an end to Washington’s reckless spending habits. Her monthly “squeal awards” highlight what she deems to be “waste, fraud, and abuse, and counter it with specific oversight and legislative solutions.”
“This is what she’s come to, which is again, making jokes about senior citizens who are going to have their health care gutted, about children in her state who are going to have their health care gutted,” he said.
