Illustration by Michael DiMilo
By Geoff Carter
Republicans have not had very good luck talking to their constituents lately. Senators and House Representatives have been shouted down or booed at town hall meetings, mostly because of their refusal to challenge President Trump’s attack on everything from the Veterans Administration to the Department of Education to the CDC to the National Institute of Health to Social Security to USAID—which has reportedly resulted in the deaths of over three hundred thousand people.
More than a few Republicans have ducked their constituents, but that hasn’t stopped town halls from happening. In Wisconsin’s Third Congressional District, Republican Representative Derrick Van Orden refused requests for a town hall, so neighboring Democrat Mark Pocan (who represents the neighboring district) organized one for him—only one of dozens of instances of town halls ghosted by the Republicans.
Those who have been brave enough to face their constituents have not fared well. According to ABC News, Representative Mike Flood R-Nebraska was booed at his town hall in Seward, Nebraska, for his support of President Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” which proposes $700 billion dollars’ worth of cuts to Medicaid which could affect millions of Americans. Flood was also booed when he confessed that there were parts of the bill he was not aware of—specifically a provision that would make it much harder for courts to issue contempt charges—a provision that would favor the litigious Trump administration.
Rep. Ashley Hinson, R-Iowa, didn’t fare much better. She was booed after praising Trump’s bill was “about providing continued tax relief for working Americans” (ABC News). Attendees also booed Hinson’s support for Elon Musk’s draconian cuts to federal budgets and programs.
These types of town halls—hosted by Republicans brave enough to face their constituents—cropped up all over the country, even in deep-red strongholds like Utah, Oklahoma, Wyoming, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Arkansas. Americans are worried about their health care, their benefits, and their well-being, and Republican senators and representatives are hearing about it. For the most part, Republicans have been bobbing and weaving and deflecting, answering their constituents’ concerns with irrelevant—and untruthful—Republican talking points. They have been embarrassed, humiliated, and harassed by their own people, but few—if any—have seen fit to buck Trump and represent their constituents’ wishes. When confronted by an angry constituent about cuts to the VA, Kansas senator Roger Marshall actually left his own town hall. These career politicians are too frightened of losing their jobs—or worse—to even pretend to stand on principle, but nothing in these town halls compares to the sheer disrespect and outright contempt shown by Iowa Senator Joni Ernst.
During a recent town hall meeting in Butler County, Iowa, Senator Joni Ernst faced an angry crowd upset with some provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a bill which would slash taxes for the extremely rich while cutting benefits like SNAP and Medicaid, affecting millions of Americans—and Iowans—who depend on those programs to live. Ernst defended the bill, maintaining—incorrectly—that only illegal immigrants would have benefits reduced or removed.
When an audience member shouted that people would, die Ernst reportedly said, ‘”Well, we all are going to die… For heaven’s sakes, folks,”’ and then smiled (NPR).“ The crowd shouted back in protest. Senator Ernst, apparently unperturbed by her constituents’ anger, went on to defend the Trump administration and the president’s pet bill, which is projected to add trillions of dollars to the national debt.
When asked if she objected to Trump’s authoritarian style of governing, she replied, “”Obviously I don’t agree because I don’t think our country is being destroyed, (NPR) ” she said as the crowd offered shouts in protest.
Then, in an astonishingly tone-deaf addendum to her response—purported to be an apology, Senator Ernst posted a video of herself walking through what seemed to be a graveyard.
“I would like to take this opportunity to sincerely apologize for a statement that I made yesterday at my town hall. I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth,” she continued, adding that she’s glad she didn’t have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy. “But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ,” she said (NPR).”
She might just as well have said, “SNAP? Let them eat cake,” but she didn’t. Yet her response is shocking on several levels. First, to act with such contempt towards her constituents at her own town hall, to address the people who voted her in, for whom she works, is beyond contemptuous. It is an arrogance born of privilege and disdain.
Her stroll through the graveyard while implying that her constituents are too dense to be aware of their own mortality is not only insulting and condescending. It assumes that those lives affected by the draconian cuts in the bill are not worth much, that those people are idiots who still believe in the truth fairy. Iowans, and any Americans (and I suspect there are more than a few), who have to suffer through this overt arrogance and scorn of their duly elected representatives should stand up and say no more.
Ernst’s diatribe is not simply insulting; it completely sidesteps the issue, and her contempt makes it clear she believes she is part of the upper class, Trump’s ruling class, if you will. This sort of disregard for the lives of other human beings (let alone ones that are supposed to be represented and protected by his senator) speaks to a vastly greater moral decay affecting our country.
In his essay The Rule of Idiots, Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Chris Hedges asserts that the downfalls of great civilizations like Rome, the Mayans, the Hapsburgs, and others were heralded by the rule of idiots—which explains the rise of autocrats like Hitler.
Citing the work of Eric Voegelin, Hedges states, “The Germans, he writes, supported Hitler and the “grotesque, marginal figures,” surrounding him because he embodied the pathologies of a diseased society, one beset by economic collapse and hopelessness (Idiots).”
In other words, Hitler was not the cause of the extremes of Nazism, he was merely a symptom of it. And so, Donald Trump—and the grotesque figures surrounding him—did not cause the downfall of American democracy, his rise is merely a symptom of it.
The shocking moral turpitude of a Joni Ernst should not be so shocking. Her brand of contempt and scorn and arrogance for America’s poor and middle-class have been staring us in the face for years. We just refused to acknowledge it. The degradation of our institutions of public education, the denigration of science, expertise, and knowledge, the rampant xenophobia, and the valorization of lawlessness have been eroding the quality of life for the typical American for decades.
We’ve been living in an idiocracy, and it took the words of one cluelessly contemptuous senator for us to realize it’s not just the one-man TACO clown show of idiocracy, but a pernicious illness that has been plaguing this country for decades. Luckily, there is still a large number—perhaps even a majority—of decent people that still abides here. They—we—are the ones who need to rise up and say not now, not here, not ever. Enough is enough.
Notes
- https://wisconsinexaminer.com/2025/06/02/pocan-holds-town-hall-in-van-ordens-district-calls-gop-budget-the-worst-hes-ever-seen/
- https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/crowds-boo-house-republicans-town-halls-trumps-big/story?id=122287753
- https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20250327-republicans-who-back-trump-get-an-earful-at-raucous-town-halls
- https://www.npr.org/2025/05/31/nx-s1-5418932/we-all-are-going-to-die-ernst-joni-town-hall-iowa-senator
- https://www.cjonline.com/story/news/politics/government/2025/03/03/what-roger-marshall-said-after-contentious-kansas-town-hall-meeting/81157001007/
- https://www.npr.org/2025/05/20/nx-s1-5400480/house-republicans-trump-tax-bill
- https://open.substack.com/pub/michaelmoore/p/american-idiots?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
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