Joni Ernst serves up death, apology, sarcasm, and Jesus.

Against all odds, Joni Ernst has made it worse pic.twitter.com/aElIudNmZG

— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) May 31, 2025

I had to go back to this after reading about it because I had clicked it off in disgust thinking it was an genuine effort to make a "sincere" apology.

For background: "Joni Ernst posts sarcastic apology video following comments that 'we all are going to die'" (Des Moines Register): "The Iowa Republican's original comments came at a town hall in Parkersburg on Friday, May 30, while she was answering a question about cuts to Medicaid in President Donald Trump's tax package that the Senate is poised to consider. During Ernst's answer, someone in the audience interrupted her to shout, 'people will die!' Ernst replied by saying, 'People are not — well, we all are going to die. For heaven’s sakes, folks.'"

"And and when I talk to people close to President-elect Trump and people who work for him, people on the outside — allies — they already see this as a resounding success."

"You know, they will say, look, who knows, maybe more accusations will come out against Pete Hegseth. Maybe we end up losing four senators and he goes down. But even if that happens, they see this as a cautionary tale for Republicans. They are putting Republicans on notice that they're not going to tolerate dissent. They're not going to tolerate opposition to Donald Trump during his return to Washington. And by making such a fight of this, by publicly forcing these senators to bend the knee, they are creating a template for what we're likely to see next year. As Trump tries to pass legislation, as he inevitably does controversial things that will make some senators squeamish, the Trump team is sending out the message. Now, there will be a very steep cost if you go against Donald Trump."

Said Jonathan Swan at the end of today's episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "Pete Hegseth Was Toast. The MAGA Swarm Came to His Rescue." 

The episode concentrates on the effort to win support from Senator Joni Ernst. You can listen to that. I won't summarize. I am blogging this because I want to say that when I heard the part quoted above, I thought: Sounds like "Master of the Senate." 

Makes me want to reread Robert A. Caro's great book about LBJ. (Commission earned.) 

I hope Trump gets his Robert A. Caro some day. 

"When Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin throws his leg across his beloved Harley-Davidson Road King for a celebration of motorcycles and Iowa pork on Saturday, the political symbolism will be as thick as the smoke from the roasting pits."

Really intense first sentence of a NYT article titled "Scott Walker Riding With Joni Ernst in Iowa as Rivals Give Chase," which Drudge is linking with the teaser "Leader of the Pack."

This post gets an epic trio of tags: meat, metaphor, motorcycle.

ADDED: The WaPo headline is: "Scott Walker is the only potential presidential candidate who can go to a biker rally and mean it."

This makes me think about a decisive moment in the debate last fall between Scott Walker and his Democratic opponent Mary Burke. As I observed it:

There was one "fun" question, asking them what they'd do if they had to go a day without campaigning and would surely take to their preferred 2-wheeler, Burke on a Trek bike and Walker on a Harley.

Burke's family founded the Trek bicycle company and Burke's campaign relied heavily on her experience as a Trek exec.

Where, exactly, would they go, and who would they go with? Walker gave the precise route, complete with route numbers and turns, and said he'd go with his usual "buddies" who motorcycle with him. Burke seemed nervous and said "um" a few times as she claimed she'd go back to her hometown and spend time with members of her family. Meade was heckling, saying that everyone knows that Mary Burke isn't much of a cyclist. Ah, but what was she supposed to do? The questioner imposed the assumption that if she had time off, of course, she'd bicycle. It would be awkward to refute that! Just because my family is in the bicycle business doesn't mean that when I get some time, what I want to do is bike. If her family were in the dairy business, would they assume that in her spare time, what she likes to do is drink milk?

Who reads a column called "A meaningless State of the Union" that begins "Why bother with the State of the Union?"

Here it is, by Jennifer Rubin. I'm just pointing at it because the headline captured my attitude, and the SOTU happened, and I wanted to commemorate the event somehow. Did I listen to the speech? I'm not sure. It was on, and I was near the television. I had my iPad out and was looking at random things, nothing nearly as focused as the Twitter feed on the SOTU. Beside me was my husband Meade, and we talked now and then, sometimes about the speech. I remember saying: "He's yelling... Why is he yelling?... He keeps yelling...." Meade turned down the volume. I got sleepy but I stayed up because I wanted to see Joni Ernst. When she came on, Meade said something about her hair that made me say: "Just think of it as a hat and it looks fine." And we talked about how old she is in connection with the question whether it's possible that she was named after Joni Mitchell. So did I watch the SOTU? Posing the question for myself this morning, I see why I was drawn to the headline "A meaningless State of the Union."

The Democrats' Senate candidate in Iowa is going to lose because of chickens.

"At no time did I ever — ever — threaten a lawsuit or threaten litigation. Never. And anybody who says that I did is not being truthful," says Bruce Braley. "This was a personal dispute between my wife and a neighbor because chickens were on our property all the time."

Even if Braley didn’t threaten a suit, some around Holiday Lake bristled at his tactics. “They are not neighborly,” said [the chicken's owner Pauline] Hampton, a mental health therapist who uses the hens as therapy animals. “In Iowa, we are very well known for being friendly, and if one has a problem with another, we always talk to them face-to-face. This kind of floored me.”

What Braley's wife supposedly said to the therapy chicken lady, who'd come to the door with a gift of a dozen fresh eggs, was: "We aren’t going to accept your eggs — and we have filed a formal complaint against you."

Another neighbor, William Nagel, who sits on the homeowners association board, said, “Buddy, we’re here in Iowa. We talk like men here and we act like men. Usually, a man’s word is like gold. A handshake is a contract. Neighbors are neighbors, and if you’ve got a problem with your neighbor, you talk it out.”...

“You threaten to sue somebody because a chicken’s on your property? That’s absolutely ridiculous,” [said Braley's Republican opponent, Joni Ernst]. “In Red Oak, my neighbor next door, when we first moved into our house, their kids were raising chickens in the garage as a project. No big deal. Oh, my goodness. It’s Iowa. Come on. Get over yourself.”

Brayley is a lawyer, by the way, and Ernst is that lady who "grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm."

"Iowa GOPer Who Aired Hog Castration Ad Wins U.S. Senate Nomination."

Joni Ernst wins her primary.

"Do I have the best credentials? Probably not. ‘Cause, you know, whatever."

So said Scott Brown, who — look at him, people! — puts the face in self-effacement. What can he do but admit to the short-comings of his residency in New Hampshire, which he'd like to represent in the U.S. Senate? But no other Republican was going to oust the Democratic incumbent Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, so if New Hampshirites want to contribute to tipping the Senate to a GOP majority, they'll have to accept a man with a lot of Massachusetts in him.

Brown moved to New Hampshire last December, but he moved into what had been their vacation house (since 1993). And he was born in New Hampshire, unlike Shaheen, who was born in Missouri, which makes it possible for Brown to say — jokingly? — “Sen. Shaheen is not from here, but apparently it’s a problem with me?” Shaheen has been a New Hampshire resident since 1973.

Massachusetts is closer to NH than Missouri is, but in the closeness there's "a complicated relationship":

They share a state line, professional sports teams and a major media market, but there are traces of resentment among some New Hampshire natives. Thousands of Massachusetts residents moved into New Hampshire in recent years, drawn by lower taxes and cheaper real estate. The migration helped give Democrats a slight voter registration advantage, although the state is considered far more balanced politically than solidly Democratic Massachusetts.

How does that cut for Scott Brown? He comes from Massachusetts, but he's a Republican, and other migrants from Massachusetts have tipped New Hampshire toward Democrats. Resentment toward Democrats from Massachusetts should translate into a vote for Brown, if the longtime New Hampshirites resist the liberalism of the newcomers. And Brown can also try to win the votes of those transplanted Massachusettans, who could see him as their guy.

Brown chuckled when 39-year-old Christine Kalinowski told him she was from “Southie,” or South Boston. She said she moved to New Hampshire just a few months ago, like him.

“I voted for him before,” she said, “and I’d definitely vote for him again.”

There's that dynamic. I suspect the newer residents from Massachusetts think they are the cool kids, and they will like seeing themselves in the gorgeous face of Mr. Brown.

I started thinking about Brown this morning because I was reading a Gail Collins column in the NYT called "The Season of the Twitch," referring to this being the "the season where center stage goes to whoever screws up the most" (and the Donovan song title). Brown's supposed screw up was that quote I put in the post title. Collins calls attention to that, I think, to dilute a truly damaging screw up by a Democrat, Bruce Braley, who was on track to win the Senate race in Iowa, until he got caught on video telling "a bunch of trial lawyers at a Texas fund-raiser that if they didn’t contribute to his campaign, Republicans might take control of the Senate and there would be 'a farmer from Iowa who never went to law school' running the Judiciary Committee."

Having begun with Brown and buried Braley in paragraph 12, Collins scampers back to the topic of Brown, declaring "New Hampshire’s still my favorite." She doesn't explain why, so I'm going to assume it's because it's a Republican screw up. Anyway, thanks to Collins for drawing my attention to this great — and totally not a screw up — ad by Joni Ernst, a Republican who's running for the Senate in Iowa, stating that she "grew up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm":



Ernst and Braley are running for the seat that Tom Harkin is vacating. Grassley is the other Iowa Senator. Braley attacked him as part of an argument for maintaining Democratic control of the Senate. Grassley is 80 years old and has served in Congress since 1975. He does have a family farm, operated by his son. His biography also shows him to have worked as a sheet metal shearer/assembly line worker for more than 10 years, and he has "PhD work" in political science. There's no reason to disparage Grassley for being a farmer. I see more reason to question whether he should be listing his occupation as "farmer," and certainly he deserves attack for hanging around Congress too long. But Grassley is not up for reelection this year. Braley is trying to say it's ridiculous for this man to chair the Judiciary Committee. The question for voters on this score is whether it's less ridiculous than having Patrick Leahy chairing the committee, which is what you get with a Democratic majority. Leahy is only 73, but like Grassley, he's been camped out in Congress since 1975.

Whatever. To sum up: Scott Brown is ultra-handsome, and Joni Ernst is an out-and-proud castrating woman.