Democrats should carpet bomb the Midwest with ads of this clip during the closing stretch of the 2026 campaign.
— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) October 26, 2025 at 1:22 PM
LOL- he's a landlord to corporate sharecroppers.
— Dennis See Sea (@dennis-see-sea.bsky.social) October 26, 2025 at 1:44 PM
Please sir I am just a small soybean farmer and a common man
— amanda moore 🐢 (@noturtlesoup17.bsky.social) October 26, 2025 at 2:21 PM
===
Reaping, sowing, things of that nature…
“Since siding with [Obama] twice, Iowa has become a stronghold for Mr. Trump. Yet perhaps no state has struggled more with his economic policies. During the first quarter of 2025, Iowa’s GDP dropped by 6.1%, more than any other state aside from neighboring Nebraska.” www.nytimes.com/2025/10/26/u…
— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur.bsky.social) October 26, 2025 at 12:35 PM
When President Trump announced a $20 billion bailout for Argentina this month, Larry Ory, 86, a farmer in Earlham, Iowa, could hardly believe it, especially after boatloads of Argentine soybeans began shipping to China, a once-critical customer for Mr. Ory’s family.
For Iowans, losing China’s soybean market in the president’s trade war was only one of many economic shocks that have hit the state since the start of Mr. Trump’s second term. The cost of tractors and fertilizers have shot up with his tariffs. Labor has grown scarcer in agribusinesses. Major manufacturers have laid off workers. Even the ubiquitous wind turbines that provide income for some Iowa farmers are in the president’s sights.
“Right now, we’re fighting different economic wars all at once,” said Summer Ory, 37, the wife of Mr. Ory’s grandson, Dan. The couple works in the family’s farm business. “You can sustain it one at a time, but right now it’s death by a thousand paper cuts.”
Ms. Ory said she votes in every election, but she, like Mr. Ory, declined to say who she cast her ballot for last November…
Manufacturing, which drives 17 percent of Iowa’s economic output, has been hit with higher production costs in part because of steep tariffs on inputs like aluminum and steel. Meatpacking plants, which help make Iowa the nation’s leading pork producer, rely heavily on foreign-born workers, hundreds of thousands of whom saw their legal status stripped away by the president. Mr. Trump’s war on renewable energy also threatens the wind industry that produces more than half of Iowa’s electricity.
Some of the state’s troubles, like bad weather, high interest rates, an aging and shrinking rural population, and global commodity prices, are beyond the president’s control. But new economic policies have magnified the state’s woes, according to economists, agricultural groups and some business leaders…
The president’s bailout of his ally, President Javier Milei of Argentina, has rankled many Iowans, since China moved immediately after it was announced to lock up Argentine soybean exports to fill the gap from Beijing’s boycott of American soy.
“Who are you subsidizing, our competitors or us?” Larry Ory asked.
Iowa’s large beef industry then recoiled after Mr. Trump suggested he would try to lower the cost of beef by importing more from Argentina. Bryan Whaley, the chief executive of the Iowa Cattlemen’s Association, said Mr. Trump’s comments roiled cattle markets, and a volatile market “provides less of an opportunity for our producers — cattlemen and women here in Iowa — to make decisions that are going to help keep them profitable and viable.”…
John Gilbert, a farmer in Iowa Falls, said he expected the government payments to favor larger agribusinesses and to drive more consolidation in an industry that has been dominated by big corporations.
“The payments are skewed to the bigger guys,” said Mr. Gilbert, a Democrat whose family has about 800 acres of land for grains and livestock…
I mean sure he’s bankrupting me and people like me, but he’s also making immigrants suffer. So as you can see, it’s a hard choice.
— Radley Balko (@radleybalko.bsky.social) October 25, 2025 at 8:27 PM
===
Final Push in Virginia – National Ground Game and the Youth Vote at Virginia Tech!
Baud
Democrat Iowa Farmer. Hero.
piratedan
Iowa, home of political masochism.
Snarki, child of Loki
The beatings will continue until intelligence improves.
Not holding my breath.
Ohio Mom
I know that eventually and indirectly, all this will bite my ass. But I’m going to enjoy those Republican farmers’ suffering while I can. I do feel for the rare Democratic ones.
No, my grudges are not my best feature.
kindness
I don’t read the Reddit Leopards Eating Your Faces threads but do see them cited a lot. You could say the farmers of America have gone tribal thinking the GOP will free them. The GOP tells them that’s what they’ll do and then screws them every time. Democrats usually make them money. Yet still they vote and donate to Republicans.
You can’t fix
tribalstupid.Turgidson
“Well I’m definitely upset that the Leopards Eating Faces Party ate my face, but at least they’re being even more savage towards brown people, so they still have my support. Blah blah blah trans people free healthcare for illegals arglebargle.”
– Rural GOP voters
satby
Yeah, the ones who don’t want to say who they voted for voted for the felon but know how stupid they look for doing so now. And they don’t get my sympathy or empathy because I’m surrounded by people just like them and they’re miserable, hateful gits even when times are ok. May they get what they voted for good and hard, because the rest of us surely will.
Old School
Has anyone started a GoFundMe for Scott Bessent yet?
Baud
I don’t support the whole “Obama needs to do X” line of thinking, but I wouldn’t mind Obama going back to Iowa to try to remind them of what they used to be.
satby
@Baud: Buttigieg won Iowa in 2020 (in the primaries), he should go. He seems to have the gift.
Baud
@satby:
That’s fine too. But Obama won the state twice in the general election. More credibility IMHO.
mrmoshpotato
Farmers having the day they voted for.
Kent
The biggest soybean farmer in the country is…
wait for it….
Bill Gates.
And since farm subsidies and bailouts usually go to the land owner and not the actual farmer, he stands to gain the most of any American in some future soybean farm bailout.
Also there are a ton of foreign companies and foreign oligarchs that own massive amounts of American farmland who would also be in line for any bailout. From Saudi princes to Russian oligarchs to Chinese investors.
TONYG
I would love to be proven wrong, but I predict that these rural assholes will vote for Donald Trump Junior (or whoever the Republican Party barfs up) in 2028. Fuck these people.
Baud
@TONYG:
Iowa didn’t even support Biden, so it’s not just the ladies they hate.
hells littlest angel
Iowans need to lay off the corn squeezings.
Timill
@Ohio Mom: But they’re beautifully polished…
mrmoshpotato
@hells littlest angel: Corn squeezings?
MagdaInBlack
@mrmoshpotato: Corn liquor ….moonshine..
Nukular Biskits
Good evenin’, y’all.
This:
I submit it’s pretty damned obvious who both of them (and many of their fellow farmers) voted for. They’re just too embarrassed to admit it now.
mrmoshpotato
@MagdaInBlack: Oh!
Baud
Via reddit
Links to Fox News article.
cain
@Nukular Biskits:
They’ll still vote for Trump a 3rd time. They are in a cult. But maybe as they see the destruction of everything they worked for, the culture they built around it, and seeing it dying within months; they’ll see that it makes a difference.
Carlo Graziani
Trump is a one-man Dust Bowl.
hueyplong
You know these people cheered the assignment of National Guard troops to blue cities. They love the harm Trump causes and every one of them assumes that as soon as the Führer is informed that some of the fire has accidentally hit them (due to unfortunate miscalculations by his well-meaning minions), he’ll cut them emergency checks and make it right. The only way to shake them of this belief is for a bunch of them to get it, as mentioned above, good and hard. It’s empathy for the rest of the country that generates Schadenfreude for the fate of these horrible and stupid people.
geg6
@satby:
Same. Fuck ‘em. I’ve driven through enough MAGA PA rural counties, with all their altars, barn signs and yard dioramas in worship to Trump that I feel nothing but contempt for these idiots.
Kent
Oh for sure they will stick with the GOP. These are my people. I have lots of extended family who live in rural PA, MI, IN, and OR who are relentlessly GOP. Mostly it is bigotry and hate and brain-poisoning from relentless FOX news messaging as well as what they hear in their churches.
Abortion and guns are the two ready-made excuses for bigotry. What do I mean? These folks have discovered that no one really questions their sincerity if they claim they have to vote GOP because they are “pro life”. We tend to be uncomfortable questioning anyone’s religious sincerity. So abortion has become the universal excuse for voting GOP for bigot reasons in the face of endless evidence that the GOP actually hurts rural economies. Guns serves the same purpose. We tend not to question the sincerity of people who vote GOP for “2nd Amendment” reasons when really they are voting based on hate.
This was all a strategy of the religious right back in the 70s when the discovered that segregated schools wasn’t a winning issue so they invented abortion. Prior to the late 70s Baptists were actually mostly pro-choice. And that was the official position of the Southern Baptist Convention.
hueyplong
@cain: I’d bet they’ve already voted for Trump 3 times. They long to make it 4.
Kent
@Baud: Democrats should go for a 2-fer. Run on a platform to:
Another Scott
Made me look… VoteRiders.org – Iowa. Iowa requires a bunch of IDs to register and to vote.
It’s not easy to quickly find numbers, but here’s what turns up for me.
In 2016, Iowa’s population over 17 years was: 322,097+761,908+805,742+514,215 = 2.404M out of a total population of 3.135M, or 76.7%
SOS.Iowa.gov says in November 2016 there were 2.210M registered voters. Or around 92% of those potentially eligible.
Were 8% of the eligible population somehow “illegal”. That seems unlikely.
It’s still too difficult, by design, for too many people to register to vote. Especially those who aren’t in the top 25% of the economy. Especially those who are just scraping by. Especially those who worry about much more than inheritance taxes, and capital gains taxes, and whether OSHA and the EPA and … are going to raid their company because of reports of ignoring heath and safety rules, and whether the DOL is going to crack down on their stealing wages from their employees, and ….
And that doesn’t even get us to the barriers to actually casting a ballot.
Grr…
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
CaseyL
It’s a cult, so you’re not going to get anything resembling “thought” from these people.
They worship Trump. Literally worship him (no wonder, since he bears a strong resemblance to their version of Yahweh). If they lose their farms, if they lose every penny, if they wind up living in their cars, they will consider it a religious duty to bear.
suzanne
My heart, it bleeds.
Kyle Rayner
@Baud: I like the idea of transforming it into a somber museum of the failures of past executives (and congressmen) and how we all worked to overcome betrayal and restore accountability before the people. Open M-F 9-5 to public tours. Less taxpayer money wasted and more education is always good.
That’s if the ballroom construction is even completed. It might still be a WIP mudpit in 2028 if they all keep just pocketing money at the rate they’ve been going, in which case restoration is the way to go.
Jackie
@Ohio Mom:
Grudges are acceptable in sports and most politics ;-)
Aziz, light!
No, they will never vote for Democrats; that’s a given. But if disillusionment keeps ten percent or more from turning out next year, that’s a big win for us.
In time they will have a new racist champion. White supremacy is a helluva drug.
Nukular Biskits
@cain: This (and variations) have been discussed here and other places repeatedly; i.e., whether to express empathy for Trump supporters/voters who are being negatively impacted by his administration’s actions … or just say “Fuck ’em”.
With me, it depends on whether they TRULY regret their support and GENUINELY want to work with people like us to put an end to the march to an outright fascist autocracy. Those folks, I can work with if they’re willing to admit that, yes, they fucked up.
The others? Fuck ’em.
p.a.
Choking on their curtainrod sparrows…
Another Scott
@Kent: I very much doubt anyone else would want it. Didn’t they “give” it to 47 because they couldn’t sell it?
E.g. Royal Junk: Brand-New, Custom $300 Million Boeing 747-8 Arrives at Scrapyard (from April 2022).
Nobody wants these things. They cost too much to run these days, among other things.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
different-church-lady
Let’s not understate this.
They Call Me Noni
@Ohio Mom:
@satby:
I both bow to and look up to you my Queens! Your Indiana neighbor feels the same. Keep voting for Republicans and expect a good outcome and this is what the hell you get.
Mr. Bemused Senior
That was my first thought. Thanks for the confirmation.
mrmoshpotato
@Jackie: Good job, Bears!
They Call Me Noni
@Kent: I live amongst them and question them on this and I tell you they are dug in. As in digging their own fucking grave dug in. For the life of me I just do not understand it.
JiveTurkin
@suzanne: “Ragland is a supporter of President Donald Trump”
If he has children I feel sorry for them. Hopefully they didn’t inherit his complete lack of intelligence and empathy. As far as the esteemed Mr. Ragland goes, I wouldn’t piss on him if he were on fire (I wouldn’t throw gasoline on him either, just let him burn). He would gladly lose his farm so long as trans kids are kept out of sports.
mappy!
I wonder if the coming week is when cracks start to appear.
Here we have these poor Iowa Taco voters wondering when the bailout checks start coming what with the ShutDown and the House on extended wait, it may be awhile; then the Trumph Tariff Tax lapping at the door, food costs rising, as well as car and homeowners insurance busting the inflation numbers, and then there’s healthcare costs, if the regional hospitals are still around. At least the housing and feeding costs of the seasonal help is down. Still…
azlib
Keep in mind it only takes a swing of 3-5% of Trump voters to swing the other way.
zhena gogolia
@azlib: Yes, the discussion is always about the diehards. He couldn’t have beaten Harris with only the diehards, not by a long shot.
Baud
@azlib:
In 2024, it was 55% to 42%
cain
@hueyplong:
They might not survive for their 4th vote with all that’s happening.
piratedan
well, you’ve lived your entire life on the land, the family farm is generational, lots of pride telling yourself that you’re essential, feeding the hungry, being God-fearing, listening to your pastor, trusting him to interpret the good book for you, translating its lessons into use for your daily life. Your neighbors look like you, think like you (except for the Thompsons’ who went to college to become farmers, those twinks). All of this is reinforced from the pulpit and AM radio and on the evening news on Fox. Its why cheap broadband getting the internet out to the boonies scares the ever loving fuck out of them, that despite everything that is stacked against it somebody, somewhere (say maybe their kids or even Crazy Uncle Charlie) could learn that this is not the only way to think, feel, understand or live a life.
Now that’s the lie that they’ve told themselves, that they are independant and free, when most of them have been sold as nothing more than equipment to big farming conglomerates with huge dept for the machinery that is used to serve the hundreds/thousands of acres that they hold title to. This is American exceptionalism gone off the charts where you’ve told yourself that your essential when you are not, hardly anyone gives a shit about you and you don’t understand it and it’s because you keep electing hateful greedy pricks that believe the same thing about your fellow citizens in the cities that you do and then you wonder why you shouldn’t be able to help yourself to those tax dollars when your life of privilege comes crashing down.
no one wants to sit down and tell them these truths, because that might hurt them. I do not see them as unreachable, but when you only drink from the same well all the time, you have no idea on what something else would even taste like. An additional problem, they have no desire to drink something else.
Archon
Farmers thought they would get a bailout (like the 1st Trump term) and everyone else would get retribution and pain.
SiubhanDuinne
@JiveTurkin:
Yeah, I wouldn’t throw gasoline on him but I wouldn’t throw water on him either. I might, however, piss on him, just for the sheer fun of it
Harrison Wesley
For some reason, this post has conjured up a couple of songs from the past for me: Jim McMurtry’s Can’t Make It Here Anymore and Travis Tritt’s Lord Have Mercy On The Working Man.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Old School:
Only if it’s a GoFundMe to put him naked on a tiny ice floe and push him far, far out to sea.
Baud
gene108
@CaseyL:
If they own their land, “losing” everything means exchanging land for cash.
They can live their cars if they want to or they could use the nest egg from land sales to invest and retrain to other jobs.
Jackie
@mrmoshpotato: Did they win?
Tehanu
What you folks said. And @Kent: I would add 3, force Dump to carry away the rubble of his “ballroom” with his bare hands until he drops dead.
trnc
So now it’s “Make Argentina Great Again?” It’s so hard to keep up.
Percysowner
@Archon:
Well Trump IS bailing out farmers, just, you know, ones in Argentina.
WaterGirl
@piratedan: Great thoughtful comment.
mrmoshpotato
@Jackie: No.
Jackie
@mrmoshpotato: Sorry
dm
@Baud: I’ve been thinking that it should be turned into a homeless shelter. Sell off all the tat to Trump-groupies at auction. Divide it into two floors, and subdivide it into apartments.
Name the shelter for someone who would make Trump stroke-out. Hillary Clinton, perhaps.
Could probably do the same with the Qatari flying bribe, too.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
I think azlib was talking nationally
JaySinWa
@dm: I suspect the Epstein Ballroom will be built to Trump standards and unlikely to be fit for any purpose.
Jay
Farm to Taber is always a good source.
youtube.com/watch?v=zdWrHb8b-c0
youtube.com/watch?v=xon9A5_4tQw
mark
I just found out my employer sponsored health care coverage is going up by 6.9% in 2026.
satby
@They Call Me Noni: wait, you’re in Indiana?? I’m currently in South Bend.
Nettoyeur
@Baud: Just repurpose it to hold IRS staff who nvestigate tax offenses.
Kent
@Jay: She is also on Bluesky
They Call Me Noni
@satby: Southern Indiana, just across the river from Louisville.
Kayla Rudbek
@geg6: even Fauquier County VA didn’t have that many Trump signs up this year when I went on a bike ride there on Saturday
Shalimar
@Harrison Wesley: The Travis Tritt song that will always come to mind when talking about any MAGA is Here’s a Quarter, Call Someone Who Cares.