'Beyond the pale': Scarborough rips 'childish' Joni Ernst for 'mocking her constituents'

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) was bombarded with scathing criticism because of a dismissive comment about the draconian Medicaid cuts included in President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill." When one of the attendees at a late May town hall in Iowa warned that people could "die" if they lose their access to health care, Ernst responded, "Well, we are all going to die."

The following day, Ernst offered a mock "apology" in a video that appeared to be filmed in a cemetery — where she sarcastically referenced "the tooth fairy." The senator wasn't really apologizing, but rather, was doubling down on her original comment.

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, a Never Trump conservative and former GOP congressman, offered some scathing criticism of Ernst on the Monday morning, June 2 broadcast of "Morning Joe" — noting that Trump's bill, if approved in the U.S. Senate, will "savage rural health care in Iowa."

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Scarborough argued that although Democrats and Republicans had plenty of heated debates in the 1980s and 1990s, politics generally weren't as ugly as the type of behavior coming from Ernst and other Trump allies.

Scarborough told fellow "Morning Joe" host Mika Brzezinski and their colleague Jonathan Lemire, "We saw it with Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan, who would work together and talk to each other time and time again throughout the 1980s even though they disagreed greatly with each other. But here, going to a cemetery to mock your constituents and talk about the tooth fairy, again, is so beyond the pale.

Scarborough continued, "I'll tell you, if you'd done that 20, 25 years ago, I don't know that senators would be talking to you in the cloakroom on Monday morning. They'd be turning their back, embarrassed of you, embarrassed to be associated with you. This is just — talk about just childish behavior for a United States senator, who is mocking her constituents who are worried about their health care, their children's health care, and their grandparents or parents health care."

Journalist Mike Barnicle, also on the panel, interjected, "She did it because she's afraid of one person, Joe: Donald Trump."

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