This farmer really doesn’t want to face the consequences of his vote

Things are bad for farmers. President Donald Trump’s mass deportations are decimating their workforce, his trade wars are restricting key markets like China, and his inflationary policies are making harvesting less profitable.

None of this is new. We saw much of it during Trump’s first term. Yet, in 2024, farmers doubled down and backed him even harder. He’s repaid that loyalty with industry-wide devastation.

You’d think they’d take their lumps. After all, the GOP is supposedly the “personal responsibility” party. They love to talk about the “heartland,” about “real America” pulling itself up by its bootstraps, about “rugged individuality.” They sneer at the cities that subsidize them and demonize Black and brown Americans all while obsessing over which bathroom someone uses.

So they got what they wanted. Why can’t they stop whining?

Take Eric Euken, a seventh-generation Iowa farmer. He grows corn and soybeans, raises cattle and pigs, and voted for Trump even knowing tariffs were coming. “I didn’t anticipate it being as bad as it is,” he told CNN. 

That’s a him problem, not an us problem.

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“It is a tough situation right now with the lack of markets that we have, or places to market our crop,” Euken said. “And it’s kind of the government that put us in that situation.”

Yes, it’s “the government” that has created this mess—but not the one that existed under former President Joe Biden. But who put that government there? He and his neighbors helped lead the charge. Again—a them problem, not an us problem.

Then he added: “So I hate to pin it on the American taxpayer, but if they want us to survive, we are going to need some help.”

Haha, what? Why would we want them to survive? 

For decades, American agriculture has enjoyed bipartisan subsidies, liberals never complaining about the charity they sent to rural America. In return, too many farmers smeared the cities footing the bill as “fraud and waste,” while tolerating and amplifying racist, sexist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic garbage. They voted for the very embodiment of that bigotry, assuming he’d hurt others. Now that the pain is theirs, we’re supposed to care? I don’t. 

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We can get our cheap food from overseas. Unless Iowa wants to bail out its own residents (which would require—gasp!—higher taxes), Eric’s survival is between him and the free market that his candidate supposedly worships.

And even he knows Trump won’t bail them out this time: “The last time when we had bailouts, it was to his benefit to bail us out for future votes,” Euken said. “Buying a future vote is not going to help him one bit.”

Now he realizes Trump doesn’t give a shit about him? Trump literally told them so—all this farmer had to do was listen!

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