After capturing national headlines on Friday for her response of, “Well, we all are going to die,” to an Iowan worried cuts to Medicaid in the Republican budget bill will cause untimely death, Sen. Joni Ernst decided to respond to critics of her dismissive response by mocking them in a passive-aggressive video posted as two Instagram stories on Saturday.
“Hello, everyone, I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize for a statement that I made yesterday at my town hall,” Ernst says directly to the camera. The senator is outdoors, and gravestones can be seen in the background. “See, I was in the process of answering a question that had been asked by an audience member, when a woman who is extremely distraught screamed out from the back corner of the auditorium, “People are going to die.” And I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium that yes, we are all going to perish from this earth.”
“So, I apologize. And I’m really, really glad that I didn’t 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.”
Ernst also posted a second, slightly shorter version of the video, with onscreen text, a musical soundtrack and ’90s-MTV-style cutaways to her saying, “We all are going to die” onstage at her Butler County town hall on Friday. This version omits the line about wanting to “sincerely apologize,” but otherwise follows the text of the longer version, ending with Ernst’s call to “embrace” Jesus.
The senator only posted these videos as Instagram stories, which Instagram automatically deletes after 24 hours. Ernst didn’t post the videos on either of her two Twitter/X feeds, or on her Facebook pages, where they would have reached a wider audience and would have remained until she removed them.
Ernst did appear to be herself at the town hall on Friday, as members of the audience questioned her about her support for President Trump’s planned drastic cuts to funding for domestic programs and the ongoing and seemingly ill-informed and arbitrary cuts to federal agencies by DOGE. (Ernst is a founding member of the Senate DOGE Caucus, which promotes the Musk-founded pseudo-agency’s work.) The Iowans gathered in the auditorium at Arlington-Parkersburg High School pushed back against Ernst’s statements, sometimes shouting and booing.
Among the statements that drew pushback from the crowd was Ernst’s defense of Medicaid cuts in the budget bill that the House passed two weeks ago. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates the budget bill passed by House Republicans two weeks ago will end Medicaid coverage for 8.7 million people and lead an additional 7.6 million Americans to go without health insurance over the next 10 years. Using the CBO analysis, the Kaiser Family Foundation, a leading research center on healthcare issues, estimates Iowa will lose up to $8 billion in federal Medicaid funds over the same 10-year period, and see a decrease in Medicaid enrollment with as many as 112,000 fewer Iowans enrolled in the program by 2034 than would be without the eligibility changes in the bill.
Ernst defends her support of the Medicaid cuts with the talking points other congressional Republicans and the Trump administration are using, claiming they aren’t actually cuts, just reforms to eliminate waste and to remove people unworthy of receiving Medicaid.
The senator was telling the crowd in the auditorium that the cuts aren’t cuts, just “corrections of overpayments and people who have not been eligible,” and suggested that people who oppose the cuts are actually in favor of “illegals receiving Medicaid benefits.” That’s when a woman in the audience shouted, “People will die.”
“People are not…” Ernst began in reply, before dismissing the comment with, “Well, we all are going to die.”
As audience members shouted in disagreement, Ernst continued in the tone of an exasperated teacher lecturing unruly students.
“What you don’t want to do is listen to me when I say that we are going to focus on those that are most vulnerable. Those that meet the eligibility requirements for Medicaid, we will protect. We will protect them. Medicaid is extremely important here in the state of Iowa. If you don’t want to listen, that’s fine.”
On Sunday, Amie Rivers of Iowa Stating Line posted a statement from India May, the person who shouted the comment on Friday.
“I’m a mom, Library Director, Registered Nurse, and county death investigator,” May wrote. “At Senator Joni Ernst’s recent town hall I live-streamed every word, listening as real fears about food insecurity and lost health care were waved away again and again.”
A friend showed May the video Ernst posted Saturday (the longer version, because May referenced the “distraught woman” comment).
“It rang hollow and repeated the same gaslighting aimed at her MAGA base,” she said.
May, who is a progressive Democrat running for the Iowa House in District 58, said she intends to “keep emailing [Ernst] daily with my concerns.”
Aside from mocking people who found her “Well, we all are going to die” response callous on Instagram, Ernst has only mentioned the town hall once so far on social media. In a tweet posted Friday on her official Senate X account, Iowa’s junior senator said, “Thanks folks for coming out to my town hall in Parkersburg today! I always enjoy hearing from constituents and sharing my work to cut government red tape for you.”
