This past week, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa came under intense criticism after she told a constituent “we all are going to die” in response to concerns about millions of Americans losing health insurance if President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act” passes.
But Ernst didn’t apologize for her callous, flippant comment. In fact, 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 said in a video mocking her critics.
In refusing to back down, Ernst was following a playbook written by no other than Dear Leader Trump.
When he first ran for president in 2016, Trump’s campaign was rocked right before the election by the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” recording, which revealed Trump bragging about sexually assaulting women and joking about how he would “grab them by the pussy.”
He didn’t apologize for what he said, even after it was condemned by some Republicans—who would eventually rally around him anyway. His electoral college victory in the subsequent election appeared to validate the strategy.
Trump has also refused to apologize for an 1989 series of advertisements he placed in several New York publications calling for the execution of the Exonerated Five, the five Black and Latino men who were wrongly accused of raping and assaulting a woman jogging in Central Park.
More recently, Trump said during an April town hall on NewsNation that he hadn’t made any mistakes in his presidency, despite negative approval ratings and a slew of indicators showing that his policies—like his tariffs—are hurting the economy.
“I don’t really believe I’ve made mistakes,” he said.
But Trump isn’t alone in the annals of GOP leaders refusing to apologize.
President George W. Bush repeatedly lied to the public, asserting that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. There were no weapons, but Bush never apologized. In fact, Bush gave a presentation at the 2004 Radio and Television Correspondents Dinner joking about the failure to find the weapons. Ultimately, more than 4,400 Americans died during the hunt for nonexistent weapons in Iraq.
Similarly, after the Watergate scandal was directly connected to President Richard Nixon, and a system of illegal campaign donations, payoff, and sabotage was exposed, Nixon also didn’t apologize. Instead, he asserted that he was “not a crook” and had done nothing wrong. Nixon ultimately became the only president to resign from office when it became clear that he would likely be impeached. He was later pardoned by his successor, President Gerald Ford.
Republicans have learned, particularly following Trump’s success, that they can simply hunker down and weather controversies. Inevitably, the media will stop asking about the offense and become obsessed with the next story of the day—often a false controversy generated by the right.
Right-leaning media outlets, particularly Fox News, are a useful tool for the right to escalate misinformation and attacks while defending Republicans from fallout. By contrast, Democrats have a serial habit of issuing apologies.
For instance, then-Senator Barack Obama apologized in 2008 for saying that many rural Americans “cling to guns or religion.”
“If I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that,” he said.
In a similar vein, when Joe Biden was campaigning for the presidency in 2019, he issued a public apology after he appeared to praise segregationists in the Senate for working with him.
“I’m sorry for any of the pain or misconception that I caused anybody,” he said.
And back in 1998, when the scandal of his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky was unfolding, President Bill Clinton released a statement apologizing to the country for his sexual indiscretion.
Sometimes Republicans have paid a price for promoting lies and refusing to apologize. As the coronavirus pandemic escalated, Trump issued lie after lie about the virus, even claiming at one point that COVID-19 would melt away as temperatures increased.
Biden, his opponent, relentlessly criticized him over the issue and kept his failed response in the news and a critical part of the campaign. Biden ultimately won the election, and exit polls showed that he won the support of 61% of voters who said the rise in COVID-19 cases was “the most important factor” in their vote.
Still, failing to apologize has won out for Republicans so often that it’s become the default. And as Ernst has shown us, the strategy isn’t going away anytime soon.