Joni Ernst’s ‘Well, we all are going to die,’ and the GOP’s flippant defenses of Trump’s agenda

CNN One of the reasons politicians don t often engage in massive overhauls of the American economic system is that it s very laborious to defend a massive overhaul of the American economic system However good any given plan is it often produces losers and even in the best of cases a few short-term pain And repeatedly now as President Donald Trump has launched multiple massive overhauls prominent Republicans have learned that the hard way Sen Joni Ernst of Iowa is the majority of current Appearing at a town hall on Friday Ernst was pressed on cuts to Medicaid the wellbeing care scheme for low-income Americans in House Republicans budget plan One audience member shouted that people will die The usual politician thing would have been to take issue with that premise or to as other Republicans have strained to do cast the Medicaid cuts as merely cutting waste and abuse That s not the full story of curriculum the Congressional Budget Office lately projected that House Republicans changes to Medicaid including work requirements for certain recipients would leave million Americans uninsured by But Ernst decided to go in a different direction Well we all are going to die declared Ernst who s facing reelection in When hostile portions of the crowd balked at the response she noted For heaven s sakes folks The senator and her office argued Friday that Republicans are in fact trying to strengthen Medicaid A spokesman noted There s only two certainties in life death and taxes and she s working to ease the burden of both by fighting to keep more of Iowans hard-earned tax dollars in their own pockets and ensuring their benefits are protected from waste fraud and abuse Ernst on Saturday issued a sarcastic apology in which she invoked the tooth fairy and encouraged people to convert to Christianity so they could have eternal life 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 And I m really really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well she explained in a video posted to her Instagram story Ernst in her Friday remarks went on to accuse her critics of not wanting to listen to me when I say that we are going to focus on those that are the greater part vulnerable Those that meet the eligibility requirements for Medicaid we will protect them As a contrast she cited an oft-invoked GOP claim that million undocumented immigrants are receiving Medicaid benefits But that s not in fact what the CBO estimate says nor does it account for the other millions of people the CBO says would lose insurance In other words however bad Ernst s answer was it might just be that there s not a good answer to be given Republicans needed to cut spending to pay for Trump s tax cuts and it s hard to cut enough unless you cut entitlements It s a political minefield that even several Trump allies like Steve Bannon have warned their party about And indeed Democrats fast leapt to highlight Ernst as the epitome of an uncaring Medicaid-busting Republican But Ernst is not the first to wander into this kind of territory Repeatedly in modern weeks prominent Republicans who have been urged to account for the pains caused by Trump s bold plans have stumbled into similar territory Trump himself has repeatedly talked about how the price increases created by his tariffs might mean people have to buy fewer dolls for little girls You know someone reported Oh the shelves they re going to be open Trump noted Well maybe the children will have two dolls instead of dolls and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally Trump noted on the campaign trail that foreign countries would pay the extra cost of the tariffs not consumers Conservative Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro called Trump s comments a tremendous commercial for Democrats and urged Trump to avoid language that minimized the impacts of inflation Back in March Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick addressed the administration s chaotic changes to the Social Protection system by claiming that only fraudsters would complain about missing a Social Guard check He pointed to his own mother-in-law The administration has pursued a series of sometimes halting changes to the Social Prevention system including limiting indicates to in-person rather than over the phone something it later walked back and cutting staff Let s say Social Safeguard didn t send out their checks this month My mother-in-law who s she wouldn t call and complain Lutnick explained He added She just wouldn t She d think something got messed up and she ll get it next month A fraudster invariably makes the loudest noise screaming yelling and complaining It s logical to assume that Lutnick s mother-in-law wouldn t complain given her son-in-law is a billionaire But according to the Social Safeguard Administration more than in seniors rely on the initiative for at least of their income Are any of these game-changing gaffes Not necessarily But they are certainly fodder for Democrats to argue that Trump is pursuing a rather haphazard and callous overhaul of the American financial system It s the kind of thing Bannon warns about in cautioning Republicans against Medicaid cuts There just aren t a multitude of good avenues to defend millions of poor people being projected to lose their robustness insurance And if the early evidence is any indication it s going to end in plenty of awkward defenses in the future