The MeidasTouch Podcast - Rep. Sharice Davids Discusses Trump’s Ultimate Betrayal of Farmers

Episode Date: October 25, 2025

MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on how Donald Trump’s plans have quickly screwed over Republicans leaders and voters who support him and Meiselas interviews Kansas Congresswoman Sharice Davids about Trump’s attacks on Kansas and farmers. 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

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. So as Americans are absolutely livid at Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans government shutdown as Americans are puzzled and pissed about why taxpayers here are giving $40 billion

to Argentina to bail out Donald Trump's MAGA puppet dictator, Javier Malay there, which we're just flushing our money down the drain. Well, 20 million Americans are set to lose health care. Donald Trump up the ante and said, you know what? We're not just going to give Argentina that $40 billion. I just want to let our cattle ranchers know here in the United States. We're going to also bring in that Argentine beef, you know, that foot and mouth disease situation going on in Argentina that's really bad.

We're going to go take that beef, bring it here, undercut our own ranchers, and then we're going to destroy the White House while we're at it. Maybe we'll do some UFC fights in front of the White House. We'll destroy the Rose Garden and what else. Then I'll just golf all weekend. So then Donald Trump sends his agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, and she makes her rounds on the show. And she's asked, what are you doing here?

Why would we be undercutting our cattle ranchers? Now, at the same time, we're bailing out Argentina. It makes no sense. You want to bankrupt our cattle ranchers? What about the free market as well? And so Brooke Rollins is asked, is importing beef from Argentina a possibility, like Trump said? Here's what she says.

Play this clip. What about beef from Argentina? Is that a possibility? Well, the president has mentioned it a couple of times. I think you'll be hearing more about exactly what that looks like right now. In America, we consume about 12 million metric tons of beef. 10 million of that we produce here in America, but the 2 million I'm talking about, we've been offshoring. And there's different parts of that, you know, what McDonald's buys and ground beef versus the actual muscle cuts, which is what a lot of Americans,

the healthy part of all of this. I mean, so then she just filibusters the rest of the answer, but she confirms that that is the plan. You're the United States Agriculture Secretary. Like, you realize that, right? You're not the Argentinian Agriculture Secretary or the Agriculture Secretary from Brazil, the United States.

You're supposed to, you know, the one thing that your job is, is like, defend your American cattle ranchers, basically, defend American agriculture. So then she's asked on third, more about it and of course she's got to make it a both sides issue the frustration here is on both sides that's that's what the issue is here plus clue having said all of that the plan that we released yesterday which the

president was so excited about we were opening up five million acres of grab taxpayer land BLM and Forest Service land for our ranchers to lease from the government or implementing new programs to allow younger ranchers to get into the business with cheaper loans better protection, et cetera. We are out with Newton Maha, with Bobby Kennedy and putting proteins, specifically beef back at the center of the American diet from the government's perspective. When you think about what we spend every day on nutrition programs from the USDA, it's 400 million a day pivoting some of that to specifically locally grown and produced and healthy, the best beef in

the world. Well, she's not answering the question. So we'll try one more time, Brooke Rollins on Trump and American cattle ranchers. She goes, there's frustration on both sides. Here, play this clip. Say that there's a bigger problem that they've got. It's not even just about the imports of the Argentine beef. That would hurt them. But then they're saying that they're struggling with the cost that they're dealing with on their small production farms. How do you address those folks? Yeah, a couple of different points on this, I think are really important. The first is that this president, when he ran and cast his vision, you know, well over the last

almost 10 years now, which is hard to believe, but certainly over the last year as he was running in 2024, was he many promises, but top of the list was securing the border, and he's done that pretty remarkably. And number two was making America more affordable again, that under Joe Biden, everything, that inflation, fuel, groceries, everything had just skyrocketed. You're not answering. The whole point is that things are more. expensive for cattle ranchers and you're putting them out of business now and you're going to be bringing in argentine and you can't just answer every question with joe biden and then donald trump responds and he writes the cattle ranchers who i love don't understand the only reason they are doing

so well for the first time in decades is because i i did it i put tariffs on cattle coming into the united states including 50 percent tariffs on brazil if it weren't for me they would be doing just as they've done for the past 20 years. Terrible. It would be nice if they would understand that, but they also have to get their prices down because the consumer is a very big factor in my thinking. Also, does Donald Trump think that the cattle ranchers

control the price of the market, that they are price fixing? He doesn't know the way anything works. I want to call in Democratic Congresswoman Cherise Davids from Kansas' third congressional district. Congresswoman Davis, it's great to see you. from Kansas, one of the biggest cattle ranching states in the country.

This must make you and your constituents absolutely livid, especially during this government shutdown where people are suffering from so many other reasons. Yeah, and you caught me shaking my head from that social media post because the idea that cattle ranchers, in Kansas or in any state would need Donald Trump from New York City telling them that he understands cattle, the cattle markets, the work that they do better than the people who get up at 5 o'clock in the morning. That's why they're successful. They're not successful because of Donald Trump. They're successful because they're working really, really hard.

And I am, I'm at a loss at why the Secretary of Agriculture would try to defend, try to defend this specific thing. I know this is politics and that's kind of what people do, but this isn't about right and left. This is about right and wrong. And the idea that our cattle ranchers are being told by Donald Trump, why they're successful is, is outrageous. And then, you know, I've heard some of my, some of my colleagues, some of my Republican colleagues have encouraged Donald Trump to be transparent about what's going on with this idea of importing beef from Argentina. And I'll just say this, we don't need transparency to know that this policy is garbage. We need to be

supporting American ranchers, farmers, producers, and this ain't it. Right. And it's now hitting the cattle ranchers and farmers, I think with 64,000 cattle ranchers, but half the farms, I think, in Kansas when I looked up and did the research, are cattle ranching farmers. But there's lots of other farms and agriculture there. Yeah. And then the other thing is, sorry.

Right. I just, like, this is so wild to me that the president decided to do this. The other thing is, you know, when you talk to folks about, because farming is tough, and when I say that, it's both, it's physically demanding and, you know, folks are getting up early, they're up before the sun, and there's that piece. But it's also, it's tough because there are all of these factors that are out of the control of the farmer. They're having to deal with the uncertainty of weather. They're having to deal with the uncertainty of the international space. You know, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the price of fertilizer skyrocketed. All these inputs that are rising are trying. are, they're trying to navigate all of this. And the last thing they need is the uncertainty

being created by these tariffs. And it's the uncertainty being created by nonsensical policy of importing Argentinian beef. And I apologize for interrupting you. I just got, oh, not all. Where I was going was, I said, so you look to your left in Kansas, and you've got cattle ranches. You look to your right. You've got soybean farmers, right? States producing nearly 200 million bushels annually across 4.7 million acres. And then the soybean farmers are looking to your cattle ranches. They go, wait a minute, we're getting screwed too. What do you mean? Well, the soybean farmers are saying, well, we don't have an export market anymore because China's not buying soybeans. And so now Trump's talking about giving government handouts to the farmers to

bail them out. The farmers, you tell me, they're saying, we have the product. We want to sell it. And now you're given a $40 billion bailout to Argentina. And while dangling in front of us that you may bail us out, we don't even know what that even mean. Who are you going to bail out? The cattle rancher, the soybean farmer, who gets priority over who? And then you're telling us we should fix the market. It's a wild concept to your point that Mr. New York City guy is out there screwing the soybean

farmer, the cattle rancher. But some of these people still vote for him. Well, what is it going to take? Some still say, you know, he loves me, though. No, he does and he hates you. Well, I think that this, and this touches on, you know, I know we're going to get to the redistricting conversation too, but this just further highlights how we have too many politicians in this country

who are willing to ignore the voices and the needs of the folks that they are supposed to be representing. And when we talk about the impact of tariff policy or this idea of importing beef from Argentina, it is like, it couldn't be the furthest thing away from listening to the folks who depend on the federal government and our elected officials to actually show up in Washington, D.C., and do the job of bringing the voices, needs, concerns, and even the successes of our constituents out here, and try to make it so that they have a dependable, reliable federal government that isn't going to make things harder for them. And right now, that's exactly what this policy is doing. This president has implemented too many extreme policies that are actually damaging so many Americans, including the 79,000 cancans that are going to lose their health care.

because they passed a budget to give billionaires more tax breaks. And I want to get into the redistricting, but I want to remind people that in Kansas, your governor, Governor Laura Kelly, who we've interviewed here before on the My Dispatch Network, she's a Democrat. Donald Trump won the state, though, in the 2024 election by 16 points.

And so, you know, it has that dynamic. Like, you know, when I talk to Governor Bashir, where you have a Democratic governor in Kentucky, for example, but then Trump won that state by, it's a fascinating dynamic. Like, do you know, seeing the dynamic and what's happening and playing out right now, how does that happen? Do you see that changing, especially as Mr. New York City's, like, literally destroying the farmers and, like, the main source of income in the state and people's lives? Like, what do you see on the ground? Yeah. What I see on the ground right now is a lot of frustration. It's a lot of frustration, confusion, and actually anxiety. And, you know, my preference would be that instead of folks having to wait until the next round of elections to make a change, my preference would be that our elected officials, my colleagues included, would actually just start listening to their constituents. And I wish that the Secretary of Agriculture and, and the President of the United States would listen to our agricultural community and understand that, you know, folks want to do their job.

They want to continue to feed the state of Kansas, the United States, and the entire world, frankly. And they can't do that with this whiplash of extreme policies that we're seeing coming out of this White House. So that's why we're seeing the redistricting efforts across the country. but that's targeting Kansas. They want a special session. Kansas is already gerrymandered in ways that make a pretty simply shaped state into one that looks gerrymandered-wise into something that looks Frankensteiny. And what's happening there?

I know this is an important issue for you. Yeah. Well, I think that your description as being Frankenstein is, I hadn't thought about it that way, but you're right. I will say that, you know, Kansans in a lot of ways, you know, when you're there, you see that folks want to know that they're going to have good public schools. Folks want to know that their children are going to have the opportunity to thrive and don't want to see the government getting in the way of that. And when it comes to this redistricting push, folks also recognize that, you know, voters should be choosing their representatives and not the other way around. And right now, because Donald Trump has essentially instructed our state legislators to take on this mid-decade, unprecedented, redistricting effort for purely political, partisan purposes, because they know all this extreme stuff is so unpopular that they're not going to win unless they cheat.

And Republicans already did this a few years ago. They gerrymandered the Kansas maps, and the fact that they're willing to revisit this is, it's outrageous that they would further polarize folks and then worst of all, like, silence the voices of Kansas voters. And I am absolutely going to fight this and try to make sure that our maps don't get further gerrymandered. because Kansas voters don't deserve to have their voices silenced because we have an administration that has such unpopular policies that they have to cheat to win. Before we go, Congresswoman, are there any other issues that you're seeing, you know, in Kansas, maybe it's health care, maybe that you keep getting asked over and over and over again, especially right now that it's important.

I want to highlight it to our six million subscribers because, you know, it's important that we cover states like Kansas and what's going on. We have a lot of people who watch from Kansas, and I want to make sure we're getting their voices out here to the world as well. Yeah, and I appreciate that. I can tell you, Kansas right now have a whole multitude of things there. They are having to worry about rising costs, everything from gas to groceries, and the health care issue you know, we're at crisis proportions here. Folks are about to, if Congress doesn't act, folks are going to lose the tax credits that have saved somewhere around $700 a year for

about 160,000 Kansans. And that's at the same time that Medicaid has been cut. And so this health care crisis is certainly on the, top of the mind of so many Kansans that I've talked to. And I'm going to continue to push leadership. You know, it is a fact that Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the White House. We need for them to come to the table so that we can actually work together. And yeah, fight it out. We need to do that. We got to have these hard conversations because that's what people expect. That's why they elect us to have the hard conversations. We've got to get the government

open and we need to take care of the health care of millions of Americans, including the 160,000 Kansans who depend on these tax credits. I think it's such an important point. There needs to be conversations. Like, it sounds so basic. But when you and I learning about government, it's like the parties are supposed to speak to each other. It's okay that they disagree.

And then they come up with a compromise and a solution. And then they figure it out. And right now, Maga Mike Johnson has said he's ordered the Republicans, do not talk, do not converse, no conversations allowed, yet alone negotiations. And I think that's what just pissing a lot of people off. They're like, wait a minute, the magas are saying that they're not talking. They're not going to do, they're too good to speak to the other side when they need the votes. That's not the way it should work.

Anyway, I appreciate you, Congresswoman, Sheree's Davids. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Everybody hit subscribe. We'll get to 6 million subscribers this.

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