Farmers see through Trump's damage control drop-by

[0:00] Earlier today, Donald Trump was in Wisconsin for a special roundtable with farmers. [0:05] There was an enormous banner that read, Fighting for American Farmers. [0:08] Trump was flanked by two big John Deere tractors, the kind of optics that politicians love. [0:13] But very quickly, it became clear that Trump wasn't all that interested in talking about [0:17] what American farmers need. [0:19] This is what his mind was on instead. [0:23] Washington, D.C. was not properly managed or kept. [0:27] We had 22 fountains. [0:31] None of them worked. [0:32] Look at it. [0:33] Can anybody see it? [0:34] That's before. [0:35] Then we had the reflecting pond, 2,500 feet. [0:40] So that's the pond. [0:42] If we're standing up, here's your Sears Tower, Empire State Building, World Trade Center. [0:50] It's a pool. [0:52] It's a reflecting pool. [0:53] Stop saying pond. [0:55] Serious question. [0:55] Does Donald Trump have any idea that he was in Wisconsin? [0:58] Because right now across this country, Trump's tariffs and the rising cost of diesel and fertilizer, [1:02] thanks to his war with Iran, are making it hard for farms to survive. [1:05] But hey, if the pond, not the pool, stands up, it's bigger than the Sears Tower. [1:11] Before that event, MSNOW reporter Alex Tabbit spoke with the president of the Wisconsin Farmers Union, [1:16] who happens to be a dairy farmer himself, about how Trump's policies are having an impact on his bottom line. [1:22] If you could pick one word to describe how it feels to being a farmer right now in America, what would that one word be? [1:32] Frustrated. [1:33] And number one, because most of the situations have been caused by the administration's actions. [1:40] Certainly understand the America first approach. [1:43] That's what we all hope for. [1:45] But in reality, are we putting America first when we're putting ourself at a market disadvantage overnight? [1:52] We can't continue this process. [1:53] Otherwise, we're going to continue to see farmers, family farmers especially, go out of business on a regular basis. [2:00] Trump isn't just making life harder for Wisconsin farmers. [2:03] He's making it harder for Republicans who represent those farmers. [2:06] Case in point, Congressman Derek Van Orden, a big supporter of Trump, [2:09] who's now defending his seat in a swing district covered in farmland. [2:13] Looks like he may have some trouble doing so. [2:14] Joining me now is Rebecca Cook, a Democratic candidate who is trying to unseat Congressman Van Orden in Wisconsin's 3rd District. [2:21] Rebecca, good to see you again. [2:22] Thank you for being with us. [2:23] Yeah, thank you so much for having me. [2:25] Well, you grew up in a farm environment. [2:28] I think you were a 4-H participant. [2:31] Let's just explain to people what it's like to be a family farmer right now. [2:35] A remarkable percentage of family farms are going bankrupt. [2:38] In many cases, they're small businesses, so they're reliant on subsidies for health care. [2:44] And rural hospitals, they are asset-heavy. [2:48] You have to buy stuff. [2:49] You've got to buy a harvester or a combine. [2:51] You could be looking at hundreds of thousands of dollars or a million dollars. [2:54] Your prices are dependent on a market. [2:57] You've got nowhere to go. [2:57] Things go wrong. [2:58] And that's without talking about climate and having a bad crop year or getting some kind of disease or pest. [3:04] Right. [3:06] Farmers are getting squeezed, squeezed, squeezed, really at every turn. [3:10] I grew up in this district on a dairy farm, actually, in Chippewa County, where Trump was today. [3:14] Our family had to sell our cows because of the price of milk. [3:18] It wasn't high enough. [3:19] It was like go big or go home, which was tough. [3:22] Our family has had a farm in this district for 150 years. [3:25] And now I think more than ever, farmers have always been squeezed. [3:28] It kind of almost doesn't matter who's in power. [3:30] But especially under the Trump administration, the tariffs, especially reciprocal tariffs and how they've squeezed our soybean farmers, our cranberry growers in this district. [3:39] And then you add in to the war in Iran, which nobody voted for, like Darren Von Ruden said, folks voted for an America First agenda. [3:50] They didn't vote for another foreign war that is increasing the price of diesel, that is increasing fertilizer prices. [3:58] And then finally, health care. [4:00] You know, when I was growing up, we didn't have health insurance. [4:03] If my mom got a job off the farm that allowed us to have it, it was great. [4:07] And so when the Affordable Care Act was passed, many people got insurance for the first time. [4:12] And so the failure recently by Congress to expand the ACA tax credit premiums have really hurt farmers, too. [4:20] People have been seeing their premiums increase from $400 to $1,800 a month. [4:25] And that's just something that people can't afford. [4:27] So really at every turn between tariffs, between these health care costs, between the war in Iran, [4:33] Trump is not delivering for rural America. [4:37] And Derek Van Orden has voted lockstep with this administration. [4:41] You talked about soybeans. [4:42] In Trump 1.0, there was this fight with China. [4:46] Soybeans, China retaliated and put tariffs on American soybeans. [4:50] America was the largest supplier of soybeans to China. [4:53] They then developed a market in Brazil. [4:55] So America never got all that soybean business back, even when those tariffs were settled. [5:00] And the net result is that we ended up subsidizing farmers. [5:05] Farmers didn't want a subsidy. [5:07] They just wanted to sell their damn soybeans. [5:08] But we ended up giving billions of dollars in subsidies to farmers. [5:12] And then a whole bunch of those farmers thought that Donald Trump saved them because he got them the subsidies for a problem that didn't exist in the first place. [5:20] Let me tell you that, like, farmers are proud people. [5:22] They are not looking for government handouts. [5:25] And so I think this really flies in the face when Trump enacts these tariffs that nobody asked for, right? [5:32] And in a reciprocal way, it damages trade relationships and our export markets. [5:39] And then he's offering money back on the back end. [5:43] Again, farmers don't want handouts. [5:47] They want a stable marketplace to be able to sell their goods to the world. [5:50] And so this is really a slap in the face to rural America, really, at every end. [5:55] And Derek Van Orden is complicit in it. [5:57] In this district, RFK Jr. was here on Monday. [6:01] Our health care secretary, who didn't talk about the big issues that we have with health care here in this region. [6:08] We've seen rural hospitals close. [6:11] Again, I talked a little bit about the tax credit premiums not being expanded. [6:15] And so it's really frustrating to have people that you think are going to be your advocates at the federal level, folks like RFK Jr., the president of the United States, come here to say all of these things that they're doing to better the lives of working farm families. [6:31] And it's actually the opposite. [6:32] And I think people can see right through that. [6:35] It's clear they're here to score political points, to try to keep their House majority and to keep people like Derek Van Orden in Congress. [6:44] And I think people are smarter than that. [6:47] And I think they're going to go to make that known in November and vote for somebody like myself that has lived those experiences, is going to fight like hell for working farm families across this district. [6:59] And if you want to support what we're doing, not just to flip the seat, but to win back the House, visit CookForWisconsin.com to support my race. [7:10] Rebecca, good to talk to you. [7:10] Thank you, as always, for making time to be with us. [7:12] Rebecca Cook.