This previous week, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa got here beneath intense criticism after she advised a constituent “all of us are going to die” in response to issues about tens of millions of Individuals shedding medical health insurance if President Donald Trump’s “One Large, Stunning Invoice Act” passes.
However Ernst didn’t apologize for her callous, flippant remark. Actually, she doubled down.
“I made an incorrect assumption that everybody within the auditorium understood that sure, we’re all going to perish from this Earth. So I apologize. And I’m actually, actually glad that I didn’t must convey up the topic of the tooth fairy as effectively,” Ernst mentioned in a video mocking her critics.
In refusing to again down, Ernst was following a playbook written by no apart from Expensive Chief Trump.
When he first ran for president in 2016, Trump’s marketing campaign was rocked proper earlier than the election by the discharge of the notorious “Entry Hollywood” recording, which revealed Trump bragging about sexually assaulting girls and joking about how he would “seize them by the pussy.”
He didn’t apologize for what he mentioned, even after it was condemned by some Republicans—who would finally rally round him anyway. His electoral faculty victory within the subsequent election appeared to validate the technique.
Trump has additionally refused to apologize for an 1989 collection of commercials he positioned in a number of New York publications calling for the execution of the Exonerated 5, the 5 Black and Latino males who had been wrongly accused of raping and assaulting a lady jogging in Central Park.
Extra lately, Trump mentioned throughout an April city corridor on NewsNation that he hadn’t made any errors in his presidency, regardless of unfavourable approval rankings and a slew of indicators displaying that his insurance policies—like his tariffs—are hurting the financial system.
“I don’t actually consider I’ve made errors,” he mentioned.
However Trump isn’t alone within the annals of GOP leaders refusing to apologize.
President George W. Bush repeatedly lied to the general public, asserting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There have been no weapons, however Bush by no means apologized. Actually, Bush gave a presentation on the 2004 Radio and Tv Correspondents Dinner joking in regards to the failure to search out the weapons. Finally, greater than 4,400 Individuals died throughout the hunt for nonexistent weapons in Iraq.
Equally, after the Watergate scandal was immediately linked to President Richard Nixon, and a system of unlawful marketing campaign donations, payoff, and sabotage was uncovered, Nixon additionally didn’t apologize. As a substitute, he asserted that he was “not a criminal” and had executed nothing mistaken. Nixon in the end grew to become the one president to resign from workplace when it grew to become clear that he would possible be impeached. He was later pardoned by his successor, President Gerald Ford.
Republicans have realized, notably following Trump’s success, that they’ll merely hunker down and climate controversies. Inevitably, the media will cease asking in regards to the offense and turn into obsessive about the following story of the day—typically a false controversy generated by the suitable.
Proper-leaning media shops, notably Fox Information, are a great tool for the suitable to escalate misinformation and assaults whereas defending Republicans from fallout. Against this, Democrats have a serial behavior of issuing apologies.
As an example, then-Senator Barack Obama apologized in 2008 for saying that many rural Individuals “cling to weapons or faith.”
“If I worded issues in a means that made individuals offended, I deeply remorse that,” he mentioned.
In the same vein, when Joe Biden was campaigning for the presidency in 2019, he issued a public apology after he appeared to reward segregationists within the Senate for working with him.
“I’m sorry for any of the ache or false impression that I brought on anyone,” he mentioned.
And again in 1998, when the scandal of his affair with White Home intern Monica Lewinsky was unfolding, President Invoice Clinton launched a press release apologizing to the nation for his sexual indiscretion.
Generally Republicans have paid a value for selling lies and refusing to apologize. Because the coronavirus pandemic escalated, Trump issued lie after lie in regards to the virus, even claiming at one level that COVID-19 would soften away as temperatures elevated.
Biden, his opponent, relentlessly criticized him over the difficulty and saved his failed response within the information and a essential a part of the marketing campaign. Biden in the end received the election, and exit polls confirmed that he received the assist of 61% of voters who mentioned the rise in COVID-19 circumstances was “a very powerful issue” of their vote.
Nonetheless, failing to apologize has received out for Republicans so typically that it’s turn into the default. And as Ernst has proven us, the technique isn’t going away anytime quickly.
