There's nothing scarier to Republican members of Congress than a town hall in the Age of Trump. It's like jumping into the Coliseum for a damnatio ad bestias. Granted, Democrats faced a similar gauntlet when the Tea Party movement rose up to protest President Obama's quest to give more Americans access to affordable healthcare in 2009. (Those citizens were awfully concerned about The National Debt we will pass on to Our Children. Those fiscal conservatives didn't seem as concerned about the recent Republican tax "reform" bill, which will add $1.5 trillion to the deficit.) But there is something singularly ridiculous about defending Donald J. Trump, American president. Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, hog castration expert, found that out for herself Monday:

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

Rural Iowa voters laugh out loud at Republican Senator Joni Ernst’s defense of Trump. pic.twitter.com/yu0ywmwQAd — ☇RiotWomenn☇ (@riotwomennn) January 16, 2018

The idea that many countries are impressed with the current state of American leadership is indeed, laughable. But what really got the attendees snickering was Ernst's desperate grab at Norway. That's the country the Enormously Consensual President said we should get more immigrants from, rather than Haiti or the "shitholes" of Africa. But if Norway's European neighbors are anything to go on, they don't hold very stable geniuses in particularly high regard. In a Pew Research study last June, confidence among Sweden's citizens that the U.S. president will "do the right thing regarding world affairs" fell from 93 percent at the end of Obama's second term to 10 percent during the first year of Trump's. In Germany, confidence fell by 75 points, to 11 percent. For citizens of our closest ally, Great Britain, it fell 57 points.

It's almost hard to blame Ernst for adopting the Paul Ryan Method: I don't comment every time the president tweets. Except the tweets are official communications from the president, and it is the essential cowardice of congressional Republicans that is allowing the reputation of the United States of America to be irrevocably diminished in the eyes of the world. Only they have the power to stop this right now.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io