This previous week, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa got here beneath intense criticism after she instructed a constituent “we all are going to die” in response to considerations about thousands and thousands of Individuals shedding medical health insurance if President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” passes.
However Ernst didn’t apologize for her callous, flippant remark. Actually, she doubled down.
“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,” 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 “Access Hollywood” recording, which revealed Trump bragging about sexually assaulting girls and joking about how he would “grab them by the pussy.”
He didn’t apologize for what he mentioned, even after it was condemned by some Republicans—who would ultimately 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 girl jogging in Central Park.
Anti-Trump protestors maintain an indication that reads, “Trump tried to murder the Central Park 5” at an illustration in 2016.
“I don’t really believe I’ve made mistakes,” 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 concerning 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 an alternative, he asserted that he was “not a crook” and had completed nothing unsuitable. Nixon in the end turned the one president to resign from workplace when it turned 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 will merely hunker down and climate controversies. Inevitably, the media will cease asking concerning the offense and turn into obsessive about the subsequent story of the day—usually a false controversy generated by the appropriate.
For example, then-Senator Barack Obama apologized in 2008 for saying that many rural Individuals “cling to guns or religion.”
“If I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that,” he mentioned.
In an analogous 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 pain or misconception that I caused anybody,” he mentioned.
And again in 1998, when the scandal of his affair with White Home intern Monica Lewinsky was unfolding, President Invoice Clinton launched an announcement apologizing to the nation for his sexual indiscretion.
Generally Republicans have paid a worth for selling lies and refusing to apologize. Because the coronavirus pandemic escalated, Trump issued lie after lie concerning the virus, even claiming at one level that COVID-19 would soften away as temperatures elevated.
Nonetheless, failing to apologize has gained out for Republicans so usually that it’s turn into the default. And as Ernst has proven us, the technique isn’t going away anytime quickly.
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