David Axelrod, ex-senior adviser to former President Barack Obama, on Monday bluntly criticized Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) for sarcastically saying “we’re all going to die” at a city corridor in response to constituents’ fears over GOP-backed Medicaid cuts.
“Individuals can be affected, while you take seven, eight, 9 million folks off of Medicaid, there can be individuals who will die,” Axelrod advised CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Ernst doubled down on her closely criticized feedback by posting a non-apology video, seemingly filmed in a cemetery, on social media.
Axelrod wasn’t having any of it.
“It was actually insensitive of her to place that video up and politically silly,” he stated.
Ernst’s dismissive remarks — which sparked a sea of jeers from the city corridor crowd in Parkersburg, Iowa, on Friday — have been in response to considerations over proposed cuts outlined in President Donald Trump’s “huge, stunning invoice” that appears to slash $1 trillion from federal well being and meals applications.
The response to Ernst has led Iowa state Rep. J.D. Scholten (D) — who as soon as practically unseated white supremacist and ex-U.S. Rep. Steve King in 2018 — to announce that he plans to problem her in subsequent 12 months’s main, telling Politico on Monday that she “disrespected” Iowans together with her remarks.
“We’re taking them off [Medicaid], so billionaires can have a second yacht, to allow them to have a much bigger tax break,” Scholten stated.
“We’ve a system that’s geared in the direction of and favors billionaires and large multinational companies, and that’s not working for many of Iowa.”
Ernst advised CBS Information on Monday that she’s “very compassionate” and claimed that individuals “must take heed to all the dialog” from the occasion.