Bulwark Takes - Your Tax Dollars Are Funding the DUMBEST Bailout Ever!

Episode Date: September 28, 2025

Tim Miller takes on the stupidest policy yet as Senate Majority Leader John Thune defends taking the revenue from tariffs to give to farmers who have been heavily affected by the tariffs themselves.

Hey, everybody, Timor from the Bullwark here. John Thune was on with Carson Welker on Meet the Press this morning. You don't see much of John Thune these days. You might not even realize he's actually the Senate majority leader. We were told, people said, people told me that John Thune, you know, was a responsible Republican, an old school, traditional Republican. And it's a good sign that he's going to be a majority leader. You know, you wouldn't want a crazy person there, like Mike Lee or Ted Cruz or something.

You want somebody with a steady hand on the tiller in case Trump goes a little nuts. Well, we have a ghost hand on the tiller right now. There's no hand. John Toon isn't doing anything. He's doing whatever Donald Trump wants. Like, he might as well not exist. I mean, frankly, if, I'm probably not Mike Lee, but I don't know. Like if Cat Turd or Candice Owens were in there, like at least Candice Owens.

So what you wonder about Candace Owens, at least she has an ethos. Like, she's got some views on things, anti-Semitic views on something. things. Not very pro-Israel views, let's just say. And she's got some other crazy, you know, dick-checking, random world leaders. But if Candace was in there as

majority leader, she would at least at times be like, no, Trump, I don't want to go along with this. So at some ways, she would at least be an independent spirit checking Donald Trump's excesses. Not John Thune. He's not checking anything. He's just on board.

No matter how stupid the policy is, no matter how harmful, how cruel, how anti-rule of law, anti-constitution, how anti-conservative principles it is, John Thune is there. And that takes us what he's talking about today, what they're planning on doing with the farmers. There's a farmer bailout coming. John Thune is on board for it. He's got a lot of farms in South Dakota. He's from South Dakota. I don't know if you knew that. Again, he's not out there that much. So some of you might not be aware that John Thun is from South Dakota. Farmer bailout. The tariffs created a trade war, predictably. Everyone predicted that. John Thune would have predicted if it was a Democrat president

if he wasn't just a total slave to whatever Donald Trump wanted. Tariffs caused a trade war. Trade war caused escalating conflict economically and consequences. And as a result, one of the many results is that farmers in his state can't sell their product, can't sell their soybeans. And as a result, you and I are going to have to pay them. We're going to take some of that tariff money that we made. We're going to give it to our farmers who are for a little while going to be hurt until it kicks in. The tariffs kick into their benefit. I cannot overstate.

This is the stupidest policy that I think I've ever seen. I mean, I guess that I get a niche level in some cities, people did some pilot programs are pretty stupid. At a national level, like, and I guess the Iraq war. I mean, I just mean, like, on a specific policy item, like, to have your idea of these tariffs, which we're supposed to bring about a golden age, is supposed to help rural America in particular, is supposed to help the forgotten man, to have them within nine months be such a catastrophe that you have to do a taxpayer-funded bailout to help the people that you fucked over because your policy was so stupid.

I mean, that is like a land speed record for policy. policy disaster. And John Thune has been riding shotgun for it. I want to listen to how John Thune explains and rationalizes the coming farmer bailout, and honestly, try not to stroke out when you hear it. Why should American taxpayers bail out farmers who are hurting because of the president's tariff policies? Well, look, I think that the farmers, and I represent a lot of them, and they want nothing more than open markets. There are markets right now that aren't open to some of our commodities. As a consequence of that, we've got a big harvest coming in here in South Dakota, corn and soybeans and no place to go with it. So what the president has said is, I'm going

to support and I'm going to help our farmers. And so we are looking at. I'm a member of the Senate Ag Committee, have been for some time, and we're looking at potential solutions to make sure that we can help support farmers until some of those markets come back. I think part of it is the president's trying to achieve with his trade policy, reciprocity with countries that have been taking advantage of us for a long time. And I think most of us support that. I think a lot of our farmers support that. They are anxious, they wanna see markets opened up.

And so when I speak to the president and his team about this, I always reiterate the importance of keeping agriculture front and center when you're negotiating trade deals. But at the end of the day, our farmers are probably going to need some financial assistance this year.

And a lot of the revenue coming in off the tariffs is what they would use to provide that. Our farmers are gonna need some financial assistance this year, And the revenue coming in from the tariffs are how we're going to provide it. Like, so you created a disaster. Like, you created a situation where farmers are so screwed, where they are so unable to sell the food that they have grown. That you need, and they're unable to do that because of your tariff policy.

Like, your tariff policy was. so bad. Within nine months, farmers need you to pay them cash because the result of your policy was that they couldn't sell their soybeans to people overseas. So they need a cash bailout while their soybeans rot. So you've got food roting. Farmers growing food for us and for the world, that's going to rot and not be able to be sold. The American taxpayer are going to have to pay for the rotting food. So that's like step one. of the tariff policy, which is bad enough on its own. How are we going to pay for it?

According to John Thin, let's listen to John Thin one more time. Our farmers are probably going to need some financial assistance this year, and a lot of the revenue coming in off the tariffs is what they would use to provide that. The revenue from the tariffs is how we're going to pay them. So you put in place these tariffs, regular people all across the country have higher bills because of it. So if you're a person, if you're YouTube viewer, you're in Missouri right now, You're going to Walmart and you do some grocery shopping there too. And so some of the food that you purchase is coming from overseas.

And that's more expensive. The beef prices are up. And then you go to the back to school section and you realize some of the clothes your kid was wearing to school. It was a little small. They grew over the summer. And so you need to get some new clothes and some of those were made in Vietnam and China. Those are more expensive. Then you go to the own good section.

You need to reprise you need a new, a place. And that's more expensive because either the appliance or the parts, and it came from overseas. And so you go to the front of the Walmart and you check out and the bill is significantly higher than it would have been had there been no tariffs. That extra costs that you paid, John Thune is telling you what they're going to do with that money. Not reinvested in your schools, not reinvested in your roads, not invested in our national defense. they're going to take that extra money that you paid in Walmart they're going to give it to the farmers

and yet they have to give it to the farmers because the tariff policy that caused your bill to be higher also caused their food to rot because they don't have any customers to sell to tip so that's it you're paying more

they're doing a wealth transfer from you to the farmers to cover the rotting soybeans. That was Donald Trump's policy. This is fucking idiocacy. This is the stupidest shit I've ever heard in my life. Like in the previous world, Donald Trump just had nothing. He just got into the White House, just played golf.

Okay? What would have happened? South Dakota soybean farmers. We're able to sell their soybeans to China. Some people in Guangzhou or somewhere would have been able to take the soybeans and use it to whatever, make soy sauce. or whatever, what are their other Setsuan foods they use soybeans in over there.

Okay. That's a good, that's a good exchange. It's a good deal. The farmers grow the food and work hard. They sell the food to some Americans, but also to some people overseas, people overseas eat the food. Good deal. Capitalism. Nice.

And then when it comes to you, the Walmart shopper, you're in Missouri. You're going to Walmart. You're going to get some food. get some back-to-school supplies. You're buying some stuff that's coming from China. It's a little cheaper. It's more affordable. You can get more stuff than you would have, otherwise. You can have a little extra cash in your pocket. Maybe you get some ice cream after. That's fine. Everything was good. There was no problem with the system. The system was working. It's the global financial capitalist system. You know, there are things that don't work about it, right?

There are things that you need to do to change to take care of people. But like, this, part of the system was working fine. Americans were buying affordable goods at Walmart. Farmers were growing food, selling that food to China. Then Donald Trump comes in. He's like, I can fix this. I got it. I'm going to make it as a golden age. He's like, I'm going to put the,

I'm going to do a tariff. I'm going to do a trade war with China because they're screwing us over. What happens? Soybean farmers don't have anybody to sell their soybeans to, so the food is rotting. Okay. And then you, the Walmart customer, goes to Walmart and you either have to buy fewer goods or pay more money because your bill is higher because Donald Trump put a national sales tax on you. And then, for good measure, they're going to take the extra money for the national sales tax and not do anything to help you. They're just going to do a transfer to the farmers to pay for the food that they couldn't sell because their policies created a trade war that shut. that shut down the markets that they used to sell to.

I mean, this is like this is so stupid. This policy should have like 2% support. You remember the bank bail? I remember how mad people were? There's a good reason to be mad. I mean, some of those cases, you know, and it was bad policy for sure

and there were some bad actors for sure, but there's some people that got underwater on the mortgages was done of their fault. I guess it's kind of similar to the farmers. It's not exactly their fault that Donald Trump I thought that he knew better how to sell soybeans than they do. And yet, there's a lot of rage over that. A lot of conservatives are mad.

We got to bail out these bankers. We got to bail out these people who couldn't afford their homes. People are pissed. Fox was pissed. Everybody should be that pissed about this. Kind of ironically, people should have their pitchforks up about this farmer bailout. Nothing against the farmers. They got fucked.

They got screwed over. They should be pissed. It's like, your money. They're taking money into your pocket and they're handing it to these other people just because they wanted to institute a policy that was stupid that everybody knew was stupid. You know who knew who was stupid especially? John Thune. John Thune. None Thun was never a tariff guy.

He was never a MAGA nationalist. John Thin was a normal Wall Street Journal Republican, but he wanted the gavel. He wanted to be the Senate Majority later for some reason. Who knows why? Seems like a terrible job to me. But you wanted to be the Senate Majority later. So he went along with us. He didn't do his job, which was to control the power of the purse,

to make sure that Donald Trump couldn't, like, recklessly ruin the economy by randomly taxing people against the way that taxes and revenue is supposed to be gathered by the government, going to Congress first, according to the Constitution. John Thune could have intervened, but he didn't. And so what's John Thune doing now? He went along with Donald Trump, and now he's out there taking money out of your pocket, giving it to his farmers, because his policy was. so stupid that they can't even sell their soybeans anymore it's a fucking outrage people should

have their pitchforks up john thune should be fucking ashamed of himself you want to talk about kitchen table issues this is a fucking kitchen table issue everybody in the country you're getting screwed by their dumb policies you got to call them out all right everybody tell your friends some people the tariff stuff maybe it's kind of complicated sometimes like this one isn't complicated it's very straightforward the extra tax you're paying it's going to bail out the farmers because their food is rotting because China won't buy our food anymore. That's what Donald Trump has given you. I'm on one today.

I'm back in the States. I'm free. I made it. We're not Russia yet. No, no hassle at the border. But the policies are still fucking stupid. We'll be talking to you guys soon.