David Axelrod, ex-senior adviser to former President Barack Obama, on Monday bluntly criticized Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) for sarcastically saying “we are all going to die” at a town hall in response to constituents’ fears over GOP-backed Medicaid cuts.
“People will be affected, when you take seven, eight, nine million people off of Medicaid, there will be people who will die,” Axelrod told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
Ernst doubled down on her heavily criticized comments by posting a non-apology video, seemingly filmed in a cemetery, on social media.
Axelrod wasn’t having any of it.
“It was really insensitive of her to put that video up and politically stupid,” he said.
Ernst’s dismissive remarks — which sparked a sea of jeers from the town hall crowd in Parkersburg, Iowa, on Friday — were in response to concerns over proposed cuts outlined in President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” that looks to slash $1 trillion from federal health and food programs.
The response to Ernst has led Iowa state Rep. J.D. Scholten (D) — who once nearly unseated white supremacist and ex-U.S. Rep. Steve King in 2018 — to announce that he plans to challenge her in next year’s primary, telling Politico on Monday that she “disrespected” Iowans with her remarks.
“We’re taking them off [Medicaid], so billionaires can have a second yacht, so they can have a bigger tax break,” Scholten said.
“We have a system that’s geared towards and favors billionaires and huge multinational corporations, and that’s not working for most of Iowa.”
Ernst told CBS News on Monday that she’s “very compassionate” and claimed that people “need to listen to the entire conversation” from the event.