MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire analyzed Sen. Joni Ernst's "bizarre" apology video after making a sarcastic crack to her constituents at a town hall.
The Iowa Republican responded "we're all going to die" when a woman shouted out her concerns about Medicaid cuts in the GOP domestic policy bill. Both Lemire and "Morning Joe" host Joe Scarborough agreed she doubled down on her sarcasm by recording an apology video over the weekend at a cemetery.
"I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth," she said. "So I apologize. And I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well."
"But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ," she added.
"I guess this is what Republican politicians in Washington, D.C., do when they get desperate," Scarborough said. "Not sure why they do this, because, you know, we just out-and-out told people what we were going to do when we were balancing the budget, did it four times in a row, didn't do it without savaging people.
" ... They're going to vote for tax cuts for Elon Musk, other billionaires, richest people on earth, and they're going to cut Medicaid, which again, for Joni Ernst in rural Iowa, actually provides an enormous amount of funding for health care in the state of Iowa, and she decides she's going to a cemetery and talk about the tooth fairy and then throw Jesus under the bus at the end. I'm not sure how that squares up with the red letters in the Gospels."
"I'm really not sure how it squares, but I guess she tried to do it, but it's a bizarre video and also especially bizarre when what she was being told by her constituents during that town hall meeting is something that every Republican with rural hospitals, with rural nursing homes, with rural pediatric centers, they know it to be the truth," Scarborough added.
"Like, how has she become this? How has she become this type of legislator? I'm just i'm at a loss."
Lemire said there was a simple explanation for Ernst's apparent heel turn after gaining a reputation as a GOP moderate.
"As for that video, what the hell?" Lemire said. "Like, I mean, that was some of the strangest politics I've ever seen and really weird, and what it is, is it's an evolution of just how Trumpified the Republican Party has been in terms of his guiding ethos. Never apologize, you always just go forward. You keep pushing, you never back down, and she tried to do it with these jokes in the cemetery that just landed so poorly. It was so tone deaf.
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"You know, she got legitimate anger in that town hall, she didn't know how to handle it. Then she said something that she knew and her team certainly knew was going to be used in a campaign ad against her, a made-for-TV moment. 'We're all going to die,' and instead of trying to walk it back, she goes, she pushes forward."
"Let's remember, I think the other important context here is Sen. Ernst, in particular, was the one who was the victim of a pressure campaign from MAGA allies over the confirmation battle for Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth," Lemire added. "She was seen as sort of the swing vote that might submarine his bid to run the Pentagon. She was threatened with a primary from the right. She didn't want to face that, [so] she changed her vote. She came around, she voted for Hegseth, but it's very clear that she's still dealing with that and is gun shy of trying to do anything to cross what she believes the president wants, because she's afraid she might get a battle internally to hang on to her seat."
Watch the video below or at this link.