If you didn’t hear:
Iowa Senator held a Town Hall meeting on Saturday to address constituent concerns about the Republican agenda in Washington, DC.
She held that Town Hall meeting at 7:00 AM because Republicans are getting verbally assaulted by their own constituents every time they attempt one of these things. In fact, GOP leadership has advised Republican lawmakers to stop doing Town Halls because they are all going so miserably.
So Ernst thought a 7:00 AM meeting might make for a quieter, more chill meeting.
She was wrong.
While discussing the millions of poor, disabled Americans – including many children — who will lose their healthcare coverage when Medicaid is cut to pay for billionaire tax cuts, someone in the audience shouted, “People will die!”
This is true. Statistically speaking, people die more frequently when they do not have healthcare coverage. Also, removing healthcare from millions of Americans will end up costing Americans even more because the medical care these disabled, impoverished adults and children receive will ultimately be paid for by American taxpayers at a far steeper rate in emergency rooms and urgent care facilities.
In response to, “People will die!” Ernst started to say, “No one will…” then pivoted and said, “We’re all going to die.”
All of this was terrible optics for Ersnst. It made national news. Late-night hosts had a field day with it. And it will surely be used against Ernst and the Republicans in upcoming elections.
But on Sunday, Ernst doubled down with a faux apology video recorded in a cemetery in which she sarcastically expressed regret for failing to realize that not everyone in the audience understands that “we will all perish from this Earth” and expressing gratitude for not needing to address the truth of the tooth fairy as well.
All terrible, again. Really bad.
The national media ran with this one even harder. More jokes. More outrage. More fodder for upcoming elections.
She also concluded by telling the viewers that if they wish for eternal life, they should embrace her Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who spent his life teaching people about the importance of caring for the poor, the marginalized, and the vulnerable.
Aside from the stupidity and hypocrisy of her statements, the thing that really irritated me was how Ernst thought she was being funny.
She doesn’t have a funny bone in her body.
By launching into what sounded like a sincere apology before pivoting to sarcasm, she attempted to use expectation and misdirection to produce a laugh, but thanks to a brutal combination of tone-deafness, bad writing, and poor delivery, she was aggressively unfunny.
Stupidly unfunny.
Then she attempted to use the tooth fairy to create an amusing analogy, but this also failed because the writing sucked, the material sucked, and her delivery was atrocious.
She then ensured that any amusement that might still be alive was decapitated by closing with a reference to Jesus in a video about stripping healthcare from the poor, the sick, and the disabled — the people Jesus spoke about most.
Most poliitians suck at being funny, and Republican politicians usually suck the most. Even when someone like Trump gets his audiences to laugh, he does so by force of personality because his jokes always suck, too.
He’s not funny. He’s just ugly, callous, and offensive, and unfortunately, that combination makes stupid people laugh.
The thought of Joni Ernst finishing that video and thinking she just got off a good one is the funniest thing about the damn video. Imagining a U.S. senator wandering through an Iowa cemetery on a Sunday afternoon, staring at her phone and recording what she thought would be amusing, is hilarious.
The joke is on Joni. She didn’t tickle a single funny bone. She didn’t produce a single giggle. She came across as a heartless, stupid hypocrite who Jesus would struggle to refrain from punching in the face if he knew what she was doing.
People will die, Joni. That is true. But people will die sooner and in greater numbers because you think that tax cuts for the wealthy should be prioritized over healthcare for impoverished Americans, including children and the elderly.
How very Christian of you, Joni. Keep trying to be funny. Your stupidity is hilarious.
