The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 22 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Editor’s note: After we recorded, the AP posted a piece reporting that cattle ranchers are also opposed to Trump’s plan. “I love ‘America First’ rhetoric,” one said. “But to me this feels a lot like the failed policies of the past—the free trade sourcing cheap global goods.”
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Not long after President Trump announced the $20 billion financial bailout idea for Argentina, he floated the proposal of purchasing beef from Argentina to bring prices down here in the United States. This enraged American beef producers. It also produced a backlash from farm-state Republicans.
But to our mind, the most interesting response came from a Wyoming farm, which posted a long lament on Twitter professing love for Trump, but urging him to change course, and warning of a deep betrayal. Is Trump finally screwing over his own supporters so badly that they’re actually getting angry about it? And what does that mean for this political moment? We’re talking about all this with Matt Hildreth, a democratic operative who runs ruralorganizing.org and whose own family has been in farming for generations, including in cattle farming. Good to have you on, Matt.
Matt Hildreth: Thanks for having me. I always like to be here with you.
Sargent: So, beef prices are running high—ground beef is up 15 percent this year. Trump is clearly worried about this. So he said the following to reporters on Air Force One this week: “We would buy some beef from Argentina. If we do that, that would bring our beef prices down.”
Matt, this has caused a huge eruption. GOP senators were blindsided—they were angry that he’s looking to deal with one of the main competitors of U.S. beef farmers. Can you explain the basic situation here?
Hildreth: For the last couple of years, there’s been a lot of uncertainty in the agriculture markets. And I think a lot of people knew that Trump was going to go after China with the soybeans. A lot of people anticipated the tariffs on China, and they anticipated that there was going to be some instability in the market and that China would retaliate.
So a lot of folks who would grow soybeans invested in more corn; they put their investments in beef. Farmers are really smart, and they know how to anticipate challenges. And so they diversify, just like anybody would diversify their investments. And so a lot of people stepped back a little bit from the beans and said, We might not be able to sell as many soybeans to China in the next coming years, because Trump’s been talking about that forever. So we’re going to put our money into beef and into corn.
And that turned out to be a pretty smart move for a number of farmers, because there’s been a few things that have happened. There are some infectious diseases and stuff that have happened in the South, and so there’s just been a limit on beef production in the last year or so—and that’s driven up the price of beef. So the farmers who may have been losing money on soybeans were going to make that up on beef.
And so they felt like they had enough heads-up on what was happening in the markets to make that move. And now you have Donald Trump, who’s just kind of off the cuff—or seemingly off the cuff—talking about importing beef from Argentina. And that would put American farmers in direct competition with the beef coming up from South America. And that’s going to bring down the price of beef.
Now, the reason why that causes so many problems is because, especially for the farmers who raise cattle—these are people who are ranchers—they don’t actually make a lot of money most years. Most years, people who do cattle lose money, or they just barely break even. But every once in a while, you have a year that’s going to pay all of your bills, pay all of your debts. And that was going to be this year.
This is the first really good, positive thing in the market for farmers. Now, for consumers, it’s a problem—but for farmers, they were going to be making back their money this year. So when Trump is throwing this uncertainty out of nowhere into the markets, it’s absolutely hitting farmers when they’re already down—they’re already kind of uncertain about where things are going. And it’s really pulling out the rug from under them on that last lifeline they had, which was the beef prices that were supporting them.
Sargent: Well, Merriweather Farms, which is in Wyoming, posted a striking lament on Twitter. “Dear President Trump,” it said. “We love you and support you, but your suggestion to buy beef from Argentina to stabilize beef prices would be an absolute betrayal to the American cattle rancher.”
The statement went on to say something really cutting as well, Matt. It said, “Helping people abroad before solving problems here puts America last.” That’s going to sting because it’s a direct repudiation of MAGA, Make America Great Again. And I think they intended to get into Trump’s head that way. By the way, this statement’s gotten a lot of press play. So I would not be at all surprised if Trump has heard it. Your thoughts on all this?
Hildreth: I think this is exactly what I’m hearing from folks in small towns and rural communities. I mean, farmers represent a really critical piece of the rural economy, and they have very traditionally been with Donald Trump.
And I think that’s happening for a number of reasons. The number one thing that I heard from folks when I talked to them last year about who they were voting for is, they would say they were voting for Donald Trump, and I would say, well, you know, he has these plans for tariffs. And to be very clear, back in 2024, we knew he was planning to do tariffs. And so we would talk about them and say, these tariffs are going to hurt small towns and rural communities. And what they would say is, this is a small price to pay—this is short-term pain for long-term gain. So the tariffs are going to be hard for us as farmers in the short term, but in the long run, it’s really gonna position the American farmer to be more competitive in international markets.
And what we see now, when Trump just says off the cuff that he’s gonna import beef from South America, it completely undercuts that argument for short-term pain for long-term gain. And it’s really unraveling all of what they see as the sacrifice for a long-term investment.
So I think that what’s happening here is not just that farmers and ranchers are really pissed off about what they’re seeing—but they’re starting to see it in a way, they’re seeing it in their own farm operations and their own small businesses, where, regardless of the talking points that they hear from Fox News, they can’t deny what they’re seeing in their bank accounts.
And then, you know, when they’ve made all of these sacrifices—they said, you know, this is going to hurt us in the short term, but in the long run it will pay off—and then they see a flippant comment like he made, it just absolutely sends shockwaves through the community.
Sargent: The question I have is, is something like this enough to push the farmers from saying to themselves, you know, I was giving Trump the benefit of the doubt, but he’s really getting this one wrong, over to, Trump doesn’t give a fucking shit about us and he’s screwing us because he really just doesn’t care? Is there a way to get that sort of constituency over to that point?
Hildreth: I think it’s a slow process, and I think it is an uphill climb—I’m not going to lie. I have spent the last several years working in small towns and rural communities. And the decline in rural America that Democrats have seen took generations to get there—took decades for that decline to really play out—and it’s not going to get turned around in any one moment.
But I am seeing something change, and I’m actually very skeptical. Like, I am very critical of the—I would sometimes hear in the past that people thought, If we just run an ad campaign, or we just do this one small investment, we’re going to see a change. And I was always like, No, it’s going to take a ton of time to get us out of this. But I am actually starting to see things turn around quite a bit.
And it’s not going to be all at once—but it’s kind of one person at a time. And one thing I always remind folks is that farmers are just one piece of the rural community, but they are an incredible voice in rural America. Farmers are some of the most trusted people when it comes to local messengers. When we look at our polling—who do you trust most?—it is the farmer.
There’s not actually a ton of farmers in rural America anymore; the industry has been largely consolidated. But when the farmers are pissed off, people hear about it and they pay attention. And right now, people—whether they’re actively involved in agriculture or just their grandparents were actively involved in agriculture, and maybe now they work in healthcare—they look at what’s happening and they see it for what it is.
And they see that Donald Trump has to make a choice. And his choice is either: Is he going to screw over his billionaire friends in Argentina, or is he going to screw over the farmer? And he’s picking the billionaire.
And I think that when we look back at the polling over the last couple of years, the most popular message in rural America was that we need to end the corruption in Washington, D.C. And Donald Trump’s message about “draining the swamp” has been the most popular message that we’ve seen in rural America across the board.
And I think that people are starting to see this corruption—and the fact that the only people who seem to be benefiting right now are Donald Trump’s billionaire friends. And I think that’s something that’s cracking through.
And I think ... I don’t know if it’s going to be a dam break, but I think the margins are starting to shift in places that I actually would not have expected. And I think that’s a really good thing.
Sargent: Well, I want to read a little bit more from that farm’s lament, the Wyoming farm’s lament: “The American cattle rancher is one of the last symbols of independence we have in the nation. The work is tireless, daily, in poor conditions, with low margins, without thanks, all in order to keep this country fed. We would be a failed nation if we continue to betray the very people who put food on the table for us.”
Again, with the betrayal language, which I think is very strong and is going to really piss off people around Trump. The valorization of rural America and farm country as something kind of uniquely American is often absurd. This statement trades in that a little bit, but Trump and MAGA traffic in that very heavily themselves.
And I just have to wonder whether a situation like this one kind of drives home to more people in rural America—maybe beyond just the beef farmers—the make-believe quality that Trump’s pro-rural posturing has. Is that something you see happening as well? In other words, I guess what I mean by that is: OK, maybe they’re gonna figure out he’s screwing us here, but he means well—do they cross over to seeing him as manipulating rural America?
Hildreth: I think Trump will always have about a 30 to 40 percent base in rural America, no matter what he does. And I think that base is always going to be higher than in more urban areas. There’s a chunk of rural America that we will just never be able to win.
But look at—when you look at the statement that you just read, it’s really unbelievable that they’re out there saying that. If I was out there saying the exact same thing—if I posted the exact same message on X—people would look at me and they would tell me to just fuck off.
I mean, it is—our polling shows—far and away, the messenger matters just as much, if not more, than the message. And the messengers here are pissed off, and they’re people that local rural folks trust. And I don’t see Trump figuring out a way out of this, and people are going to get screwed.
There’s going to be a record number of bankruptcies in agriculture, and I think people are going to look back at this and just have a ton of frustration—feel incredibly burnt. And I don’t know where they take that anger. I don’t know if they take that anger to the Democratic Party, but I don’t think they’re going to be sticking with Trump like he expected them to.
Sargent: Well, you’ve got the tariffs killing rural America. The Medicaid cuts are already leading to rural hospitals closing—or planning to close. Food stamp cuts and the lapsing of the expanded ACA subsidies—Affordable Care Act subsidies—will badly hurt a lot of Trump’s working-class supporters.
I’ve never seen it pile up quite this way before. Trump One screwed a lot of working people pretty badly. Republican administrations have a long history of screwing their own voters pretty badly—especially in rural America. But I’ve never seen a critical mass of it in quite this way. Am I right about that?
Hildreth: It’s almost impossible to track it, and to explain it in such a short amount of time. It is piling up. And the other thing is—and they didn’t mention it in their Twitter post, or their X post—but immigrants are the backbone of our agriculture economy.
And so, when you talk to farmers and you actually process through what’s going on—when Covid hit the meat-packing industry—it was the immigrants and the refugees in the packing plants who were considered to be essential workers. And they’re the people who kept America fed. When you talk to farmers, they know it, and they actually appreciate it. They know that there are immigrants out there working, and the beef industry is built on that labor. And they might not say it publicly, but to themselves, they know it and they appreciate it.
So that’s just one other piece. The agricultural workforce is being decimated right now. And then you throw on healthcare—I mean, so many of these farmers, they have to have off-farm income just to get access to health insurance. The ones that have health insurance are getting it oftentimes through the expansion of Obamacare. Their premiums are going to be going up. The cost of their fertilizer is going to be going up. Their income is going to be going down. I mean, they are so screwed.
And I think for a long time, the policies were having an impact on their lives. So when you talk to farmers, they might not say it publicly—they’re oftentimes a little bit afraid to admit it—but they know that their workforce is being decimated by Donald Trump’s immigration policies. Healthcare premiums are going up. And for a while, Trump was able to hide how his policies were impacting people because Fox News would come up with some sort of talking point—they would somehow blame Democrats for something Trump did.
But that’s not happening anymore. And it’s just so overwhelming that I think people are starting to realize that they’ve been had a little bit. And I don’t know that they’re going to admit it publicly, but I think we’re going to start to see it even in the places where you might not expect it. It’s not going to be everybody, but it’s going to be, I think, enough to really start having an impact on statewide races.
Sargent: Well, speaking of statewide races, we’ve got a big gubernatorial election in Virginia in November, a lot of state legislative seats as well. Do you think that we’re starting to really see the manifestations of a rural turn against Donald Trump or if not quite that, a rural cooling on him that could actually matter in an off-year election in which turnout is low?
Hildreth: Absolutely. I think there [are] two things happening in Virginia right now. One is, there is a cooling on Trump—and I think that’s having an impact on Republicans at all levels. And I think that right now, we’re not hearing that much from the Trump base in small towns and rural communities, including in Virginia.
I can name hundreds of places that had massive turnout for the No Kings rally—and maybe three or four people, even in small towns and rural communities, turning out to counterprotest in support of Trump. So I think the Trump base is cooling.
At the same time, Democrats are being mobilized in ways that I actually had not even seen in 2024. In Virginia specifically, there’s a group called Rural Ground Game—they’re doing fantastic work—and they’ve recruited, in every race at the state level, they have a candidate. And that’s unheard of.
Now, a lot of those candidates are going to lose. A lot of the Democrats who are running in rural Virginia are going to lose. But the fact that they have somebody running in every race is going to increase the margins, even just a little bit, in those areas. One thing that we always say is: You’ve got to lose less. And that is something that, when you have candidates running in every race—like Rural Ground Game is working on in Virginia—it’s going to bring up the statewide numbers.
And so I think, because you have those two factors—the Trump base cooling, and then also Democrats getting mobilized, and the Democratic base being mobilized—and that mobilization coming from small towns and rural communities, in addition to the more urban areas, I think it’s going to have an impact.
Sargent: Well, it seems to me that you’re getting at a critical aspect of what Democrats are trying to do a little more of these days, which is going into rural communities and finding the Democrats in those places, right? Because in the southwest tip of Virginia, Democrats are vastly, vastly outnumbered by Republicans and Trump voters. It’s in Appalachia and so forth. But there are still some Democrats there. And if I understand the new thinking, or at least some of the recent thinking, properly, the idea is to go and find Democrats in places where they’re outnumbered just to get those statewide totals higher for the Democratic Party. Can you talk a little bit about that innovation and you know, whether we’re going to see some of that succeed in Virginia and what that means.
Hildreth: I’ve always referred to this as the “Democratic doughnut hole.” So you have base voters in non-targeted areas, and that base has been ignored for years. If you’re a base voter in a targeted county, you are flooded with advertisements, you are flooded with mailers, you are flooded with text messages.
Let’s say you’re a base voter in a county that has maybe only 35 percent of the voting population being Democratic—you’re gonna receive zero resources. So, going back to the Harris-Walz campaign last year, when I was serving as the rural vote director, we went into a county in Pennsylvania that received zero resources because they were not part of the coordinated campaign.
So you had base voters there—about 17 to 20 percent of the population were base Democratic voters—but they had no resources because they weren’t in a targeted county. So you have all of these people who would be with us if they turned out to vote, but they’re getting nothing from the Democratic Party because the party is focusing on maybe 20 percent of the more populated counties.
And so we think that you can go into those places, you can resource those places, and you can move the needle from maybe losing by 20 percent to losing by 15 percent. And if you can do that in enough places, you can bring up the numbers statewide.
That’s something that we’ve been really focused on. That’s something that Rural Ground Game in Virginia is really focused on, and I think is really kind of the cutting edge of what’s happening there. And I think we’re going to start seeing that in more places across the country, because I think Virginia is showing that it can work.
Sargent: Last question, Matt, is all this madness coming from Trump—the Argentina stuff, the tariffs, the screwing over of rural hospitals, the decimation of healthcare, etc. The crushing of the immigrant workforce. Is that opening up channels to communicate to Republican-leaning rural voters? Is that something that can happen finally or not?
Hildreth: I think so. And if you would have asked me that in the past, I would have said probably, but I’m more confident now than I think at any point. And I’ve really been waiting to have that confidence. I was one of the biggest—even though I work in rural America, and I think because I work in rural America—I was one of the most ... I was very skeptical in the past.
But it has just gotten overwhelming. And it’s not just, will people see how the policies impact them, but will people see how the policies impact them in spite of the fact that they are being flooded with Fox News information and they don’t actually have access to the same information that you and I have access to? And that’s the real challenge.
Our polling going back to 2018 showed that when good things happened in rural America, people just assumed it’s Republicans, because they think Republicans are the ones fighting for them. Despite the fact that all of these good things that happened in rural America were coming from the Democrats, the policy was not leading to the political wins because we were losing the communications fight. And so that’s the biggest, I think, challenge that we’re seeing now.
But because this is having a direct impact on people’s paychecks, because it’s having a direct impact on their bank accounts, and last, because Donald Trump said for years that he alone was the one who could fix it. I think that’s why the Republicans are starting to see a perfect storm, where people are saying, Wait a second, things aren’t getting better. Your message was that you were going to fix higher prices on day one. You didn’t.
Trump set the bar so high that he was never going to be able to achieve it. And so now I think people are starting to say—you know, my friends, my family members, that one crazy Democrat that I never listened to, that I get coffee with in the morning—they might be onto something. And I think that’s what’s cracking right now in a way that I hadn’t anticipated.
And I think it’s really going to be on Democrats to be able to step into that space and realize, You know what, there are people that might not be worth us talking to because we’re never going to win them. But what we saw with No Kings—I saw more Republicans and independents at No Kings this last time than I had ever seen at any of the previous stuff.
There are still people out there who are coming over to us, that even after all of this time hadn’t gotten over to us, that are now showing up. So I think we have to be welcoming those people and finding them—and realizing it’s not going to be a wave all at once. It’s going to be one person at a time. And I think that’s what’s happening.
Sargent: Well, there really is a perfect storm of terrible policy here. I got to hope that Democrats know that and are going to really ramp up the outreach in those areas next year because it’s pretty critical. Matt Hildreth, thanks so much for coming on with us, man. We really appreciate it.
Hildreth: Thanks for having me.