"We All Are Going to Die": The GOP's Marie Antoinette Moment

In a shocking response, Iowa Senator Joni Ernst responded to constituent concerns over the GOP mega bill's $880 billion in Medicaid cuts by deadpanning that...we all have to die sometime.

The Republican Party has now entered full-on “let them eat cake” mode, removing any pretense of concern or care for many of the constituents they’re about to kill.

At a town hall event in Iowa, Republican Senator Joni Ernst, who is up for reelection in 2026, fielded concerns from worried constituents concerned about President Trump’s ghoulishly-labeled “big beautiful bill.” Specifically, they expressed concern over the machete the GOP bill takes to Medicaid ($880 billion in Medicaid cuts while awarding a $4.5 trillion tax cut for wealthy folks).

“People will die!” a concerned constituent shouted at Ernst. Her response was so awful, so inhumane, so…cartoonishly evil…at first I thought I must be watching one of those deep-fake videos.

“People are not gonna…,” Ernst began, seeming like she was about to assure folks in attendance that they will not die because of the Medicaid cuts. A las, she took an alarming detour.

“Well, we all are going to die,” she said, eliciting audible gasps and grunts from shocked attendees. She finished by uttering “for heaven’s sake.”

Besides the reality that Ernst just handed over the greatest political gift of all time to her future Democratic Senate opponent (apologies in advance to Iowans for the 20,000 “we all are gonna die” Ernst ads you will see on TV next year), it is really hard to express in words the true moral depravity of her comments.

But the reality is, Ernst said out loud what the entire Republican Party, and a large number of Democrats, are really thinking: I got mine, good luck to you and yours.

Or, if we move back to the times of Queen of France Marie Antionette when she was told of the starving peasants…

“Let them eat cake.”

Think about it: Senator Ernst, and her fellow Republicans slashing healthcare for the most vulnerable among us, have gold-star, gold-plated healthcare through their government jobs. They pay low deductibles and low co-pays. Beyond that, the majority of Representatives and Senators are millionaires.

None of them have to worry about paying for preemptive cancer screenings, expensive chemotherapy, MRI’s or X-Rays, emergency surgeries, physical therapy, chiropractic care, dental care, substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment, or the rest of the full range of physical and mental healthcare needs.

None of them are living like the millions of Americans suffering through rank poverty, or as my colleague Ashley Bishop recently covered ON-THE-GROUND, rationing food as folks struggle well below the poverty line.

“I'm used to living off like $150 dollars a month,” an attendee at Bernie Sanders’ “Fight Oligarchy” rally recently told Ashley in Philadelphia. “I don't spend more than that. Then they say oh you're approved you get SSI. So they cut the food stamps off.” Heartbreakingly, she revealed she is only able to afford rice and some vegetables (WATCH INTERVIEW BELOW).

Of course, Ernst will do a mea culpa, frantically shouting into whatever camera and microphones that will have her that she didn’t mean to basically tell the people who voted for her to be happy with their crumbs and just….die quietly.

Her comments, and more importantly the actual looming Medicaid cuts, are very likely to spark mass outrage, and potentially political revolt, once the estimated 7.6 million Americans expected to lose their healthcare because of the Republican bill find themselves angry—and desperate.

Perhaps even bigger than their anger and desperation over losing their Medicaid, as the American Prospect’s Dave Dayen told us in a recent interview (WATH BELOW), the Republican bill will give the wealthiest Americans—the top 0.1 percent of earners—an average tax cut of $390,000 dollars per year while those making between $17,000 and $50,000 a year will pay an additional $700 in taxes per year.

Although I don’t condone or call for it, if and when this economic and moral depravity happens, none of us should be surprised if Americans’ economic anger and desperation spills over into violence.

At a certain point, the starving masses—hungry and now without the shitty healthcare they once had—are primed to snap.

If and when that happens, Joni Ernst and the rest of her ilk better have a better answer than “well, we are all going to die.”

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