A longtime Republican pollster questioned whether Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) might be having a "nervous breakdown" given her recent "cringe" video, in which she doubled down on her attacks on constituents.
During a town hall meeting with her voters on Friday, Ernst heard numerous concerns and fears about the significant cuts to Medicaid in the GOP-supported budget bill.
Ernst told those voters, "Well, we're all going to die anyway."
After the video went viral, Ernst doubled down, telling her voters she was sorry for breaking the news to them that death was coming and also that the tooth fairy wasn't real.
Speaking about it on "Deadline: White House" with MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace, GOP pollster Sarah Longwell warned Ernst that this "is absolutely going to backfire."
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"First of all, that video of her, it looks like she must be having a nervous breakdown. She is in a cemetery while she is making that joke. And one of the first things, one of the first rules about making a joke like that is it should be funny. And there was nothing funny about that. It was — I think what the kids call 'cringe' is how it felt," confessed Longwell.
"I mean, this is a thing they've learned from Donald Trump, right?" Longwell explained, talking about how Trump doubles down on his gaffes even if it looks bad. However, that doesn't always work with other Republicans who try to deploy the tactic.
"It's like, you say something stupid, you don't apologize, you double down. And, so, that was her doubling down," Longwell continued. "But this is the kind of thing that Democrats should be all over, because what she did was highlight the thing that is the most pernicious about the bill, which is that people are going to lose Medicaid. And Republicans right now are out there desperately trying to convince people that that's not true. They are lying to people about what this bill does, because they know that that is going to be deeply unpopular and not just unpopular with Democrats."
She said that she thinks many Republicans haven't been able to catch up to the fact that the GOP "has changed." A significant part of the Trump coalition of voters comprises working-class individuals who hold populist beliefs.
That "includes now a lot of people who are on Medicare. A lot of people who depend on these social services. A lot of lower-income Americans and rural areas. And so, mocking them — that's why Trump is very populist about these things. He tries to act all the time like they won't touch these programs," she closed. "And so, her sort of, doubling down on this and drawing more attention to the fact that it will do real harm, is one of those big PR disasters that, I think, they think they're being clever on. But is absolutely going to backfire."
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