The cohosts of The View were unanimous during Monday’s (June 2) new live episode when it came to the subject of Iowa Senator Joni Ernst’s controversial comments at a town hall.
The Republican senator caused a firestorm when, during a discussion of how Donald Trump‘s “Big Beautiful Bill” will negatively impact funding for Medicaid, she said, “Well, we’re all going to die.” She then doubled down on her statement over the weekend by posting a video taken in a graveyard on Instagram in which she declared, “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this earth… 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.”
Whoopi Goldberg was the first to speak in response to footage of both statements and said plainly, “Rethink bringing her back if she’s representing you.”
Sara Haines, who is from Iowa, vehemently agreed. “She’s up for re-election in 2026 so I would say take note because she’s bending the knee to the wrong boss right now. Those town hall [attendants] are her constituents,” she said. She went on to chide the senator for her tone and delivery, saying, “Just in a sales capacity, if you are looking to cut things, and you know it hurts and we’re in a divided time, communicate clearly and kindly with people that are saying they’re hurting. The lack of emotion, empathy, but also just the callousness and the insult and how she handled it… and then to follow up and do a double dose of it is stupidity. She’s also falsely saying that immigrants are receiving Medicaid. They are not allowed to receive Medicaid. So this is how politicians will fool people who don’t check their own facts, and say, ‘Oh, this other thing is your problem.’ When, no… she was not giving them correct information.”
Sunny Hostin spoke next and presented some facts and figures about the subject at hand, saying, “What this ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is going to do is it’s going to strip 8.7 million people off of Medicaid and lead to 7.6 million more uninsured people over the course of 10 years. So we’re not talking about a small group of people. We’re talking about our older people. We’re talking about our infants. We’re talking about young people not having insurance. And the problem with that is that now people are going to start going to emergency rooms again, and so we’re going to lose about a trillion dollars. That’s a kitchen table issue, isn’t it?”
Alyssa Farah Griffin then joined in and agreed that it was a “PR blunder and a mistake” to say what she said at the town hall, adding, “The doubling down stood out. Joni Ernst does no know better. She’s a combat veteran. She served our country, but she is facing primary challenges ahead of the 2026 pitchers. She got on the wrong side of Donald Trump because she was one of the people opposing Pete Hegseth. She ultimately ended up supporting him, but the MAGA world is coming for her. They’re trying to take her out of office. So she’s going back to the Donald Trump playbook of, ‘Double down, never admit fault,’ with the second video. The problem is, 10 years into the Trump era, it works for Trump a lot of the times, [but] it never works for other people when they try to do it. It comes off heartless, a lack of empathy.”
Ana Navarro then jumped in with a sliver of praise to start her comments, saying, “First I gave her at least some kudos in the sense that she actually had a town hall because so many of these Republicans in the Senate and in the Congress are running scared and don’t have the guts to face their constituents.” However, she then said, “She’s up for election in 2026 so these comments could come back to haunt her, and the people in Iowa could put her political career in the grave since she enjoys going to cemeteries.”
Navarro then said Ernst’s comments are part of a larger problem across the country: “It’s not just Joni Ernst. [It’s] the lack of empathy, the lack of humanity, the lack of decency that I am seeing all over the country with the suffering that Donald Trump and his misadministration are inflicting on people living in this country, our neighbors, our friends, our colleagues, the children who go to school with our children.”
She also blamed others in Congress like Ernst for not standing up. “We have no checks and balances. There is no oversight. If we want that to change, as you always say, it is on us, and we can change about making sure that there are Democrats elected next year, so that there is some guardrails and some oversight, because at the same time that they are dragging Latinos all over the streets of America and treating them worse than we would allow animals to be treated in this country, he’s opening up the doors and sending a U.S. taxpayer-funded plane to go pick up white Afrikaaners fleeing from a nonexistent genocide.”
Hostin then suggested that members of Congress should be on Medicaid instead of their premium government-funded policies.
“All the time, I used to say, ‘You don’t know what it takes to be on Medicaid,’” Goldberg agreed. “This is nothing new. Unfortunately, the circle is getting tighter. This is stuff we’ve always known. We always knew this was what the plan was. The information was right there. So now you have to make a decision, are you happy with what’s going on? If you’re happy, then just keep living your life. But if you’re not happy, you need to get out and vote.”
The View, weekdays, 11 a.m. ET, ABC