The MeidasTouch Podcast - Iowa Senate Candidate J.D. Scholten on GOP Tax Bill Disaster

Episode Date: June 28, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on MAGA Mike’s disaster bill getting altered in the Senate and Meiselas interviews JD Scholten who, a Democrat who is running for Senate in Iowa. Visit https://meidasplus.com for more! Remember to subscribe to ALL the MeidasTouch Network Podcasts: MeidasTouch: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/meidastouch-podcast Legal AF: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/legal-af MissTrial: https://meidasnews.com/tag/miss-trial The PoliticsGirl Podcast: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-politicsgirl-podcast The Influence Continuum: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-influence-continuum-with-dr-steven-hassan Mea Culpa with Michael Cohen: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/mea-culpa-with-michael-cohen The Weekend Show: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/the-weekend-show Burn the Boats: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/burn-the-boats Majority 54: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/majority-54 Political Beatdown: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/political-beatdown On Democracy with FP Wellman: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/on-democracy-with-fpwellman Uncovered: https://www.meidastouch.com/tag/maga-uncovered Coalition of the Sane: https://meidasnews.com/tag/coalition-of-the-sane Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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They sent a letter yesterday to the Senate Majority Leader and MAGA Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader Thune and MAGA Mike Johnson, just basically saying what the Senate is doing with the budget bill is a total betrayal. You've made it worse. I don't know how you can make it much worse, but the Senate Finance Committee managed to make it much, it worse. I don't know how you can make it much worse, but the Senate the Senate Finance Committee

Managed to make it much much worse, but there's nothing there's no low about what maga Mike Johnson will say or or not Say maga Mike Johnson mocked millions of Americans who could lose health care and says hey You just need to be doing something constructive with your life If you're gonna be on the public wagon and you're able, you should try to help pull it. All we did was put in there, as you all know, a 20 hour work week requirement per week. Give me a break. They're complaining about that. You either have to be working. You got to be looking for a job in a job training program or volunteering for your community.

For heaven's sake, do something constructive. How about Maga Mike Johnson? You do something constructive because there ain't no work really coming out of that House of Representatives other than taking away people's Medicaid and basically rubber stamping whatever Donald Trump wants. Let me just share this with you all here. This is Maga Mike Johnson. This is how they try to frame it on the propaganda of Fox, where Maga Mike Johnson is asked, What do you say to the Democrats that are pushing this narrative? That's not true. It was a ridiculous question to ask. That's not true that Republicans are cutting Medicare and Medicaid. Like it's literally in the bill that it cuts Medicaid and Medicare and risks people social security. But go on, Meg and Mike, let's play. And what do you say to the Democrats that are pushing this narrative that's not true

that Republicans are cutting Medicare and Medicaid? Yeah, it's of course nonsense. We had their ads taken down when they began to claim that early on in the process. We are not cutting Medicaid. We are strengthening the program for the people that desperately need it and deserve it. The populations that Medicaid is intended to help, and that's the elderly and the disabled and young pregnant

women, for example. So what we're doing is... Then Maga Mike riddled me this. Why did your own party send a letter to you and Senator Thune saying that they are very alarmed at what the Senate is doing and it's going to make the budget bill even worse. Then you have Mike brazenly lying again and saying we're not cutting Medicaid. We're strengthening it. Just listen to whatever Trump says. He never lies, does he? You're playing this clip.

You've got a number of provisions. We want to make sure that we hold by our commitment that we are not cutting Medicaid. The president has said that and I've said that. We've all said that. We are strengthening the program for the people who are the most vulnerable populations who really rely upon that.

You're talking about the disabled, the elderly, young pregnant women, for example. Oh, got it. They're helping the most vulnerable, not the billionaires. That's where their focus is on. You know, and then, you know, you've got these mega Republican senators like Jody Ernst from Iowa. And when she's asked about Donald Trump's other kind of betrayal and lie, there's so

many of them. But starting a war in Iran, joining Israel in a war with Iran. But then I guess their new statement is, war is peace, we're not really at war. Don't worry about it. Here, play this clip. They do not want to see a war.

This is not a war. This was a strike on a threat to the United States of America. I would say as well, this is retribution, Harris, for the thousands of American lives that have been taken by Iran through direct strikes from Iran as well as their terrorist proxies. Well, apparently, we also learned

that the facilities are still largely intact and Iran's no longer meeting with the IAEA to cooperate with any oversight into their nuclear arsenal and that if anything things have gotten much worse. I want to focus on how all of these policies are also hurting states like Iowa. You saw Joni Ernst there. And so let me bring in Iowa State Representative, J.D. Shulton. He's running for Senate against Joni Ernst.

And State Representative Shulton's also a professional baseball player. You got the Sioux City professional shirt right there. You're at the stadium. So let me ask you this question first though, because when Donald Trump was campaigning He did not know the difference between Sioux City and Sioux Falls And I think you know, it's it's an important point though

I think to bring up which is that Washington Does not know about what's actually happening to the farmers in Iowa and to me It was a really revealing moment if you don't know the farmers in Iowa. And to me, it was a really revealing moment if you don't know the difference between Iowa and South Dakota. So that revealed a lot to me. I mean, that's pretty consistent with what we hear from folks out in DC.

We're a flyover state, and so folks like Donald Trump don't recognize the difference between the two states. And the reality is a lot of Iowa has not bounced back since the 2008 economic crisis. You have farmers right now that are impacted by the first trade war with that during the first Trump administration. A lot of our soybean farmers have lost the market to Brazil. And so a lot of folks who are relying on that for decades of trying to get into that market

have now lost it in just a few years and will probably never see that again in my lifetime. That's the reality. You have Joni Ernst out there saying, why are you so focused on the die part of this? Like if you die, we're all gonna die at some point. So like, why do we care? You're gonna die no matter what. And then she goes in front of the cemetery and then she like mocks, one, I thought it was so disrespectful to people's resting places,

but then also, you know, mocking people's fears of dying. You know, and I don't like to go into hyperbole and talk about, you know, death cult and this and that, but it's like, we know that this bill is going to have consequences on people in the state, on people's jobs, on people's healthcare, and she like, and she mocks it, and she mocks people dying, it's sick.

Exactly, it's so disrespectful of what she said just in that quote, unquote apology. The reality is, we all are going to die, but we don't have to die so billionaires can have a bigger tax break. This bill, if passed, is going to devastate a lot of our rural communities. It's going to devastate rural hospitals, it's going to devastate rural nursing homes and OB-GYN clinics, all of which are already massively consolidated, and it's just going to lead to more stress on urban health centers. And so this is going to impact all of us, not just kick off millions of Americans and thousands of Iowans off their healthcare. It's also going to hurt all of us because the healthcare centers are gonna close. You know, Trump has this schtick where he'll go and travel to a state like Iowa and he'll

say, oh, my farmers, I love you, my farmers. No one's gonna make you better farmers than I'm gonna make you. You will be the greatest farmers ever. You'll be so rich. And then he lies and then screws him over. He then tries to scramble and figures out if he can get government subsidies to cover losses that are caused by the trade wars, that he starts as kind of temporary band-aids on a solution that's unsustainable and actually building the wealth that farmers deserve in a state like Iowa.

So I guess how do you win? And how does that work? I mean, look, to your point, when people think about Iowa, I think from DC, they try to, they view it as a flyover. They view it like this and that. The people in Iowa are smart.

I see the people out there in Iowa protesting at no kings and it seems that they get it. So how do we translate though? Like how do we get people to say, no, no, no, I know he's saying that, but he's screwing you. Every time he does this, he does that, then he screws you, wake up. Well, it was interesting when I ran for Congress,

we got retweeted by farmers and ranchers for Trump. You'd see that in their little bio and everything. And a lot of it because I took strong stances against anti-monopoly and enforcing our anti-trust laws and having new ones. I've talked to farmers who will always vote for me and ones who will never vote for me and everywhere in between.

And when you convey that, they know they're being squeezed. They know on the input side when it comes to seeds and fertilizer and those costs, they're getting squeezed by a huge multinational corporation. They know on the market side, they're being squeezed by a multinational corporation. You have JBS, Brazilian owned, very corrupt, charged with over $256 million worth of fines

because they're so corrupt, give the Trump inauguration $5 million more than all those billion tech billionaires that were front row and center. JBS gave them more for that inauguration. And now the Trump administration's trying to waive some of the laws that we have to protect like the Foreign Corruption Act, so JBS can have more benefits to them. It's a pay to play situation. And this is something that we need to talk about

because farmers feel this. I think COVID put a huge spotlight on this. You had farmers getting squeezed. You have workers working in suppressed dangerous situations. You have the consumer paying the most they ever have for things like meat and different things like that. And then you have these huge multinational corporations bragging about the record profits they have.

All that happening at the same time. And so I think if we're going to win in rural America or compete in rural America, you have to talk about things like that, at least in the Midwest. You know, one of the things that I try to say too, is that farmers are so integral to our country. The very fabric of our country is built on farmers. And I always say that really what Donald Trump and MAGA and people like to me journey air and start doing

is they're using farmers as props. And by the way, it's, I understand at some level that, you know, it's exciting to be on TV and to, you know, to have the shiny lights on you and to have someone who is the president or whatever put their arm around you. But the question is this, as you look back at Trump's 2016 campaign, as you look at what he's doing now in 2024, you always like, are you better off? And, you know, it just seems that over and over again,

farmers are used by Washington, by Trump, to get the photo op of himself next to someone who looks like a farmer, you know, who's out there, you know. And so Trump can say, you see, look at me, I care about these people. And then they not only disappear, but then they undercut the market by going to Brazil or China or elsewhere and throw the American farmers

under the bus. I'll give you the final word on what you think our audience needs to know. Well, that's exactly right. And that's why we talk about fight, fix, secure every single day. Fight for universal healthcare, fix the economy so it works for everyone, not just the billionaires and the multinational corporations

and secure our democracy from the billionaires and special interests that are dictating things. So if you wanna follow our campaign, you can go to sholtonforiowa.com. All our socials are on there too. We're creating something special here in Iowa. This race is ripe for an upset. And so I just hope folks can follow

along because some special is brewing. JD, where can more people find out about you in your campaign? Yeah, you can go to Shulton4Iowa.com. Everybody check it out. Good luck in the game tonight. Who are you playing? The Winnipeg Goldeyes. We were in first place and now we're in second, so we got to get it back. Good luck. And everybody hit subscribe, check out that site and let's get to 6 million subscribers.