Here’s a story in two parts, both of which will be crushingly familiar to you. The main character of our tale is Iowa (uh oh) Senator Joni Ernst, who held a town hall in her home state this past Friday. Ernst’s constituents at that town hall were vocally angry about President Trump’s massive tax bill, which passed in the House a month ago and threatens to cut half a trillion dollars in funding to Medicaid. People will die if this bill passes in Ernst’s chamber. When one audience member informed the Senator of this fact, she responded, with supreme Midwestern condescension, “Well, we’re all going to die.”
That’s the first part of our story. The second part is Ernst’s formal response to the heckling, which she recorded on her phone while walking around a graveyard. Take it away, womanboss.
“I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that yes, we are all going to perish from this earth," Ernst said, her voice dripping with contempt. "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. For those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my Lord and savior Jesus Christ.”
This woman is a piece of shit. I’m not interested in any further political analysis, because none is required. I don’t need to label Ernst a threat to democracy. I don’t need to bust out an extended PowerPoint deck that assigns 12 Pinocchios to every lie she’s told. I don’t need to be like, This woman doesn’t represent the America I know! All of that parsing would only serve to dilute the only important point, which is that this woman, at the core of her very being, is a complete piece of shit.
But you already knew that. The story of a prominent Republican trolling their own voters and then deploying Jesus of Nazareth as their ideological meat shield—hasn’t that man been through enough already?—has been a familiar one to you and me for a decade-plus now. Joni Ernst is a piece of shit championing a piece-of-shit bill, all in service of President Piece of Shit. Meanwhile, POTUSPOS is holed up at his piece-of-shit mansion in his piece-of-shit adopted home state, eating a well-done shit sandwich while he exchanges catty texts with his Secretary of Shit. Later today, they’ll join the Vice President Shit For Brains for a call into Piece of Shit News to chat with host Shitana Poopolo. Then they’ll all gather in the Situation Toilet to approve Judge Gaping Asshole to the federal circuit before discussing Elon Musk’s Department of Shitting On Things, which that piece of shit abandoned so that he can go back to his day job of making piece-of-shit cars that burst into flames and piece-of-shit rockets that always blow up in mid-air.
These people are all pieces of shit. Worst of all, they are now legion, feeding off our collective misery the way a bacterium might feed off the nitrogen fumes given off by a freshly lain bolus. And for what? Money? Respect? Immortality? Don’t make me laugh. There’s no eternal and everlasting life for a piece of shit like you, Joni Ernst. You’re going to die too, you know. I hope it’s sooner rather than later, and I’ll be ready with my selfie cam when it does.
