The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 7 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Thanks to President Trump’s policies, a confluence of events is about to unfold that will absolutely clobber rural America. First, there’s Trump’s trade war. On Tuesday, Trump unleashed a bizarre rambling rant that indicated he’s absolutely fine with letting it drag on forever, our exporters be damned. Meanwhile, there are new indications that farmers in Trump country are already getting hammered by these tariffs. On top of that, the House GOP’s planned cuts to Medicaid are very likely to be a massive problem for rural hospitals. And big GOP cuts to food stamps will also inflict pain on rural areas. So is there an opening here for Democrats to win back some ground in these places? Today we’re talking about all this with Matt Hildreth, executive director of RuralOrganizing.org and a veteran Democratic operative in rural areas. Matt, great to have you on.
Matt Hildreth: Thank you for having me on the show. I’m a big fan.
Sargent: Thanks, Matt. Let’s start with what Trump said on Tuesday. He was talking about how he hasn’t yet made any deals with other countries to dial down tariffs. Listen to this.
Donald Trump (audio voiceover): Just to finish, we also have a situation because everyone says, When? When? When are you going to sign deals? We don’t have to sign deals. We can sign 25 deals right now, Howard, if we want it. We don’t have to sign deals. They have to sign deals with us. They want a piece of our market. We don’t want a piece of their market. We don’t care about their market. They want a piece of our market. We’re going to sit down and we’re going to put very fair numbers down and we’re going to say, Here’s what this country [wants], what we want, and, Congratulations, we have a deal. And they’ll either say, Great, and they’ll start shopping, or they’ll say, Not good. We’re not going to do it. And I’ll say, That’s OK. You don’t have to shop.
Sargent: Matt, the quote that jumps out at me is, “We don’t care about their market.” Here he’s clearly saying, We may never make deals that will dial down the trade war. What do you think farmers who rely on exporting food to international markets are going to make of that?
Hildreth: Yeah, I think that that’s a really good point. When you talk to folks in small towns and rural communities, they’re paying attention to markets. That’s something that you learn when you’re a farmer and you study things like ag economics: It’s all about understanding the markets. And I think sometimes there’s a lot of stereotypes about farmers—that they’re just dumb hayseeds, simple people that sit on tractors all day. Farming is pretty sophisticated. Whether you’re a farm worker working out for the growers in the fields or you’re sitting in a combine, there’s a ton of science and there’s a ton of economics. It’s all economics.
And I actually think Donald Trump probably really doesn’t care about the markets. He’s more focused on his favorability. He’s more focused on his vengeance. But farmers absolutely care about their markets. It takes years to establish relationships in international markets for farmers, especially when it comes to farmers in the Midwest with corn and especially soybeans. Farmers have been dedicating tons and tons of time and resources to establishing those relationships. And many farmers are seeing those evaporate overnight.
Sargent: Well, The New York Times has a new piece confirming this, reporting that farmers in Iowa are already getting hammered economically and the local economies are slowing down. The Times reports on Monona County where Trump got 72 percent of the vote, quotes a farmer there saying the trade war is going to hit hard. A lot of this is due to China’s tariffs and retaliation against Trump’s tariffs. Matt, you spent a lot of time in rural America. Let’s talk about how important Chinese markets in particular are for farmers in the places that you organize.
Hildreth: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, RuralOrganizing.org started in Northwest Iowa in Steve King’s congressional district, so agriculture is something that we hear about all the time—and especially when it comes to soybeans. That’s something that I think people might not recognize if you’re not from a farm family: Soybeans are an absolutely critical component of many Iowa farms and have a big impact on rural economies. And so when you lose that foreign Chinese market with your soybeans, that’s a huge hit. I’ve heard things like one in three rows of soybeans is going to China. So when you think about all those rows of soybeans when you drive across Interstate 90 or Interstate 80, it’s just a huge export out to China. The farmers in Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, the Dakotas are going to be hit especially hard.
Sargent: So Matt, to what degree do you think these farmers are going to blame Trump’s policies, his trade war with China for their inability to sell to those markets? Are they going to say to themselves, Well, the president has asked me as a patriot to swallow all the pain and it’s going to really make things better later in some vague sense for the whole country? Or do they just not really get snowed by that? You’re telling me that the farmers you organize among are pretty shrewd people a lot of the time. You’d think they’d see through the folly of the trade war if that’s the case. Do they?
Hildreth: Yeah, I think there’s three components to the answer to your question. One is that one thing we see overwhelmingly in our work is that when good things happen in rural America, many rural voters just assume it was Republicans. We saw that going back to the stimulus checks that the Biden administration sent out. People loved those checks. They loved the child tax credits. They love things like that, and they assume it’s just Republicans doing it because Democrats are not present in the communities. And so much of the way the Biden Build Back Better projects were administered were through local and state Republicans. So when good things happen, people assume it’s Republicans. And when bad things happen, their bias just makes them assume it’s Democrats. Because Republicans control the House and the Senate and the White House and the Supreme Court, and because Donald Trump has set himself up as the authority, it’s really hard for them to blame Democrats right now—especially because he’s gone so far out on a limb on trade. So that’s the first piece.
The other two, I think, are a little bit harder. One is farmers are very stubborn in their position on Trump. I think that’s something that we all know. For many of us that have worked in small towns and rural communities, farmers have supported Trump for a very long time. And a lot of them just did not believe what was in Project 2025. There was so much that we’re seeing now that was outlined in Project 2025. And when we would talk about it, people would say, Yeah, that’s just politics. Trump’s not going to actually do it. So there is that stubbornness.
The last piece of this, though—the third piece that I think is really important—is most rural Americans are not farmers. And when you look at where the trade wars are hitting, it’s far beyond the corn and soybean fields. I was just in Home Depot yesterday getting some wood for our chicken coop. A man in a Punisher T-shirt with an American flag walked up and he was standing next to me, and he just goes, Fuck, screws are so expensive right now. So there are so many places where the tariffs are going up and people are seeing prices increase. And some of that might be directly related to tariffs like the situation with the screws, but things are going up for many different reasons right now. And I think Trump has actually positioned himself to be blamed across the board. People are going to make a lot of excuses for him for the next couple of weeks, but if things continue, I think there’s going to be a real softening that we haven’t seen in a while.
Sargent: A recent Marist poll found that Trump’s support in rural America has pretty much collapsed. It’s now at parity, 46 to 45, which is really surprising given that Trump carried rural America overwhelmingly in 2024. I’ve got to ask Matt, how seriously should we take that though? Is it a superficial expression of, Oh, the screws are expensive, which you overheard from a rural voter just the other day, something that won’t actually sink its claws into rural America in any real way? Or is there an actual chance that this will alienate a fraction of these voters enough so that they can get peeled away? How real is it that that disapproval of Trump is actually pretty high in rural areas?
Hildreth: I’m feeling that the disapproval is as high as I’ve ever seen it. In my day-to-day life, I live in a small town, I live outside of small town. I’m feeling it. My family back in South Dakota is feeling it. Something is happening. So I think that the movement that we’re seeing in the polls, and that poll specifically, is real. I’ve dug into some of the numbers to really try and understand where that movement is happening. It really seems like it has to do with the people who are tuning in to the networks.
We’re not moving voters when it comes to Fox News. We’re not moving voters when it comes to right-wing media. But for the people who are still getting their news from the nightly news, that seems to be where the support is softening the most. And it is setting up an opportunity for Democrats to step into that space. But the numbers reflect what I’m seeing in my day-to-day life. And I think there’s some big questions, though, about what we do with it. Can we sustain it? Is this just a bad week versus is this a real shift in the momentum?
Sargent: Well, I want to ask you about the information environment, which you just brought up. It’s overwhelmingly clear. You spend any time in rural America, you can immediately see that there’s this immense information vacuum—that a lot of people in rural America are hearing just one side of the story, just the Republican message, just the Trump message. They never hear mainstream media. They never hear what Democrats have to say. But it sounds like there’s at least some percentage of rural Americans that you think are getting their news from networks and from more neutral sources. Can you talk a bit about that?
Hildreth: Yeah, absolutely. So in rural America, the local news is always the most trusted news. When we do surveys on “Who do you really trust for your news?” it’s the local papers, it’s the local radio; if there’s TV, it’s the local TV. And when you look at the numbers, Donald Trump won over 90 percent of news deserts across the country. These are communities that don’t have a local source of news on local issues. So they don’t have a local newspaper. They don’t have a local news source through their radios or on television. And that’s where Donald Trump is really succeeding.
When the conversation is about national issues and about national politics, it’s very easy for that Fox News talking point to carry the day. But when you have to compare what you’re hearing on Fox News or right-wing media to what you’re seeing in your local news, it really changes the dynamic quite a bit. So that’s why I think in these places where we do still have some really strong local newspapers—places like Iowa; Iowa has amazing small-town papers—that’s where I think you’re seeing some of this support softening up.
And then also amongst the viewers, the people at home that get their news from PBS—PBS is still a huge source of news in small towns and rural communities—or the evening news, that’s where I think we are seeing people move. It’s not huge. It’s like 3 to 5 percentage points right now, but I still think that’s a significant amount of people. And that’s where we really need to focus: the people that are getting their news from places other than Fox News. Yes, most people are getting their news in rural America from Fox News, but it’s not everybody. There’s quite a bit of those independent voters that are getting it from other sources.
Sargent: And the margins are what matter here. I feel like a perennial thing we hear from Democrats is that they’re always about to regain some ground in rural areas thanks to GOP budget cuts decimating rural hospitals, but it just doesn’t seem to happen. Now we have another test of this. The GOP budget is expected to cut Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars. Rural hospital officials recently told The Washington Post that these cuts are going to really erode health care availability in these places. Is there any prospect for that to matter this time around?
Hildreth: Yeah, I think so. And you mentioned the margins. One of the things that we say all the time—it started as a joke, and it’s become kind of an organizational slogan—is “lose less.” So in a lot of places, we’re not actually looking to win even at the city or at the county level. But if we can just move the margins by 3 or 4 percentage points in rural communities across the state, that can have a major impact on statewide elections. So there’s places in Wisconsin where I think we are seeing Democrats at the state level doing a lot better because they are cutting margins in rural areas. We’re seeing that in Georgia. We’re seeing that in North Carolina.
I think oftentimes it’s not translating to the top of the ticket. And a lot of that has to do with how the presidential campaigns are run; [they] run on national issues, not on local issues. But I think there are very specific examples in places, especially North Carolina, where you have rural hospitals closing and you have people getting pretty pissed off about it. Now, do they know how to translate their local hospital closure to policies that the Republicans support, specifically not expanding Medicaid? Maybe not. And that’s where we really run into problems in the local news deserts where there’s no source of local information. But for the places where Democrats can get in and can connect the dots between their hospital closing and the policy supported by the governor, I think we are seeing movement.
Sargent: Well, there’s one other area for Dems to exploit as well: cuts to food stamps. That’s something that can also hit rural areas pretty hard. You’ve actually got some vulnerable House Republicans from rural districts like Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin and Don Bacon in Nebraska making noise about opposing these cuts. But House Democrats just put forward this discharge petition—which could theoretically pass without the GOP leadership supporting it—that would protect Medicaid and food stamps from GOP cuts. You’d only need a few Republicans to support that for it to pass—but let’s face it, that won’t happen. No Republicans will get onto it. Is there any way for Democrats to use that to inflict political pain on Republicans among rural voters?
Hildreth: Yeah, absolutely. And we’re in the middle of launching a new campaign that we’re calling the “Campaign for Rural Prosperity.” It’s all about protecting and strengthening rural services like Social Security, [which] is a huge source of income in rural America. Medicaid is an absolutely critical piece of the equation. And then SNAP, or food stamps, is the other piece of it.
Food stamps or SNAP, those impact rural communities on two fronts. One, rural Americans are more likely to use those benefits just because the poverty levels are higher in a lot of small towns and rural communities. But also, those benefits are going to farmers. So it’s not just about benefits to people who are hungry; it’s also about creating higher demand for farmers. And that’s why you see it impacting in places like Wisconsin and Iowa and a number of these congressional districts. We don’t need to flip a ton of congressional districts to have a massive impact on our politics right now. And when it comes to Medicaid, there’s between six and 10 Republicans at any moment that are really feeling that pressure. Piling on with SNAP and piling on with the Elon Musk conversation about cutting Social Security, I think that’s all really good for Democrats right now.
Sargent: I’m really glad you mentioned Musk because it really feels to me like we’re seeing this confluence of things all gunning straight for rural America metaphorically in a way that I’m not sure we’ve seen in a long time. There’s the trade war; there’s the Medicaid cuts; and then there’s DOGE. Elon Musk is a big looming presence behind all this. I can’t imagine he plays very well in rural America. Is there a confluence here in some kind of new way, or are we just going to get disappointed again?
Hildreth: Well, the question about whether or not we’re going to get disappointed again is, I think, a very real question. That’s the thing that keeps me up at night, and that’s the whole focus of our organization. But there is ... It is a special moment right now. And something that those of us from small towns and rural communities that are engaged in politics and policy know well is that the federal government is actually absolutely critical for small towns and rural communities. Everybody thinks [about] Ronald Reagan’s [saying], “The worst thing you can say is I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” They think that’s something that just resonates with people in rural America—and it does from a bumper sticker point of view. But the fact is that rural Americans are very connected to the federal government through employment.
All of the national park rangers, they are federal employees. The people working at extension offices telling people how to grow their tomatoes, they get federal funding. The connection between rural America and the federal government is strong; it’s been strong since FDR. And Elon Musk has gone through the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA, with a chainsaw and cut critical programs for rural development, critical programs from the Farm Service Administration. I think he was cutting things that he didn’t even understand. He was unplugging parts of the Agriculture Department that he didn’t even know what they did. Those were felt immediately in small towns and rural communities. And it’s creating a new appreciation for the services that are coming from the federal government.
And so much of the federal government services in rural communities have a local brand. So you might not know the USDA at the national level, but you know the local guy who you go to when your tomatoes aren’t growing. And once those people start telling you, Hey, these cuts are having an impact, I might get fired, that’s really, I think, waking people up in small towns and rural communities.
Sargent: But Matt, are these voters going to connect this stuff to Donald Trump and the Republican Party—the national Republican Party? That’s the big question.
Hildreth: Right. The question is: Are they going to connect it to the Republican Party? And are Democrats going to be able to take advantage of it if they do? I think a lot of that is still out for debate, but right now, it doesn’t really matter what Fox News is telling you when you go to the hardware store and screws have gone up 100 percent. Something is off. And across the battleground states, Donald Trump had signs that said, “Donald Trump means lower prices, Kamala Harris means higher prices.” And people know that’s not happening right now. That’s a pretty simple and pretty effective message, and it’s actually backfiring on him right now because things are going up so dramatically.
And when people said that they were willing to put up with a little pain for a long-term game, they were overwhelmingly talking about a couple of percentage points in the increase in their food or in the increase in their groceries for a couple of weeks. They were not talking about what we’re hearing in this quote that you played at the top about indefinite tariffs, 145 percent. So I do think people are going to connect it to Donald Trump, but I do think that Democrats need to step into the space. We’re seeing a lot of that momentum already, and I think it’s not about winning every single rural voter. It’s about cutting the margins by 4 to 7 percent.
Sargent: Well, we should probably have another pod soon to talk about whether Democrats are actually stepping into that space, which is a very big topic. Matt Hildreth, thanks so much for coming on, man.
Hildreth: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.