After Saying the President “Will Do Want He Wants to Do,” Ernst Takes Her Partisanship One Step Further By Proudly Promoting Her Party’s Political End Goal Instead of Being Fair & Impartial

Senator Joni Ernst, the third-most unpopular senator in the country, made national headlines overnight for self-exposing her flagrant partisanship that voters at home have come to expect. Going further than her GOP colleagues dared, Ernst revealed that she’s more focused on scoring political points than holding a fair and impartial trial.

Senator Ernst’s quip quickly became a national punchline – but to Iowa voters, it only further exposed how her political career has transformed into a party-over-country charade that has left Iowans behind. Senator Ernst ranks as one of the most partisan senators in the country, voting last year with Mitch McConnell and her party leaders 99.1% of the time.

In Case You Missed It:

Morning Joe: Senator Ernst “said out loud what she’s supposed to keep in her head” 

CNN: “If I’m a Republican standing next to her, I’m grabbing her away from the microphone”

KCCI: Senator Ernst reveals GOP objective in impeachment trial

CNN: Ernst spoke ‘with a smile on her face, revealing at least part of the President’s motivation’

WQAD: Senator Ernst promotes influence campaign to damage Trump’s political rival

Cheddar Business: “Joni Ernst let on a little bit more than she meant to”

Iowa Starting Line: It’s all a big joke to Joni Ernst 

  • Senate Republicans need to give Sen. Joni Ernst the hook and get her off the national stage. Not only is she giving away their party’s cynical game on impeachment, she’s making herself look like a fool in the process.
  • Since Ernst’s arrival in the nation’s capital, she’s quickly pivoted from her campaign image of a farm girl going to D.C. to make ’em squeal to the ultimate D.C. insider, a ladder-climber who will do and say whatever to move up the Republican ranks.
  • Senate Republicans rewarded Ernst’s loyalty with an important position in Senate leadership, making her the only woman who currently holds such a spot.They may slowly be realizing they made a mistake.
  • The role has given Ernst a larger national platform at Republican events and press conferences, and she’s played a major role during the impeachment trial of defending Trump. But at so many of these public gatherings, she’s come off as petty and sarcastic, not to mention blazingly partisan, on one of the most serious topics that D.C. has faced in decades.

Washington Post: Joni Ernst says the quiet part out loud

  • Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), who has been running away from reporters and voters who dare ask whether she objects to using U.S. aid to extort a foreign government to interfere in our election, let the cat out of the bag. During a brief media availability on Monday, she rightly declared that the Iowa caucuses are set for next Monday. She then stepped into the political quicksand, confessing that she was “really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters, those Democratic caucus goers. Will they be supporting VP Biden at this point?” Oops.

CNN: Joni Ernst just said the quiet part out loud about the Senate impeachment trial

  • Sometimes politicians can’t help themselves. They get careless. They say stuff they shouldn’t say. They tell the truth that they have been trying to disguise.
  • So it went for Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst on Monday night. Following an afternoon at the Senate impeachment trial in which President Donald Trump’s legal team made the case — without any established factual basis — that former Vice President Joe Biden had acted inappropriately in 2016 when he called for the resignation of the top prosecutor in Ukraine, Ernst told reporters this.

MSNBC: Describing attacks on Biden, Iowa’s Ernst ‘gave up the game’

  • As former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), an MSNBC political analyst, noted on Twitter soon after, “Umm. I think Joni just gave up the game.”
  • Quite right. Like Kevin McCarthy in 2015, Joni Ernst said the quiet part loud yesterday, suggesting Team Trump’s attacks against Biden were less about presenting a legal defense during an impeachment trial, and more about influencing the outcome of an election.
  • Not surprisingly, the Biden campaign took note, and the former vice president’s official Twitter account said last night, “Iowa caucus-goers take note. Joni Ernst just spilled the beans.”

Politico: Biden says Ernst ‘spilled the beans’ with caucus comments amid impeachment fight

  • Ernst received swift blowback for her remarks from Democratic lawmakers and critics on social media, who accused her of transparently attempting to smear Biden and undercutting the legitimacy of the White House’s impeachment defense.
  • Ernst’s comments also drew comparisons to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s boast in 2015 that the work of the Republican-led House Select Committee on Benghazi had diminished Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s standing in public polling.

Esquire: Republican Senator Joni Ernst scored a spectacular own goal talking about Joe Biden and Ukraine

  • In a moment reminiscent of Kevin McCarthy’s Benghazi flub, the Iowa senator proudly trumpets that it’s just about hurting Biden’s campaign.
  • Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who is locked in a tough reelection fight and decided her best strategy is to pledge undying fealty to the president, decided to make the Trump legal team look like distinguished arbiters of the Constitution and the law by comparison. Ernst found a microphone bank outside the chamber and absolutely smashed the ball into her own goal.
  • Ernst just announced that Senate Republicans don’t actually care about corruption, not that she really needed to say it outright. It’s just political mud to be slung.

NY Mag: GOP Senator Suggests Party is Using Ukraine Scandal to Hurt Biden in the Primary

  • Joni Ernst quite explicitly set the record straight. Referring to the defense team’s opening statements depicting the Bidens as America’s number-one family for nepotism and corruption, the Iowa senator pondered how the day’s developments would inform caucus-goers in her home state

The Hill: GOP Iowa senator suggests Trump impeachment defense could hurt Biden at caucuses

  • Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst (R) suggested Monday that President Trump‘s legal team’s focus on Joe Biden and his son during its ongoing impeachment arguments could hurt the former vice president during next week’s caucuses. 

Huff Post: GOP Senator Joni Ernst Ponders Whether Senate Impeachment Trial Will Hurt Joe Biden 

  • Ernst, who is also up for re-election this year, said it was “entirely appropriate” for the president’s defense team to attack the Bidens. She said the information aired about them on Monday might be useful to the voting public.
  • “It really, I think, opened the eyes, maybe of not just the folks in the Senate, but maybe those folks at home that were watching this afternoon,” she said. “And with the Iowa caucuses coming up next Monday night, maybe it will influence some of those voters as well.”

Politico: ‘It’s going to be harmful’: Republicans weaponize Trump team attacks on Biden 

  • Senate Republicans used the concerted attack on Biden to raise questions about his political viability. “Iowa caucuses are this next Monday evening and I’m really interested to see how this discussion today informs and influences the Iowa caucus voters, those Democratic caucus goers, will they be supporting vice president Biden at this point?” asked Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa).

TPM: Almost comical

  • You don’t need more evidence that Trump and Republicans are coopting the impeachment drama to advance the Biden smear campaign. But here’s Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) shouting the quiet part.