Killing Themselves For Trump -- Digby

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/07/07/killing-themselves-for-trump/

I don’t know how we survive if these people are willing to sacrifice their lives and livelihoods for their Dear Leader (NYT link):

Wheat grows so prodigiously here on the Kansas high plains that in 1953 the surplus birthed one of the Cold War’s big ideas: Food for Peace, a federal government program that delivered the excess bounty to a hungry postwar world.

Conceived by a Kansas farmer and created by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Food for Peace has sent burlap sacks of grain stamped “From the American People” to more than four billion people in 150 countries around the world. Now it is effectively dead.

The program was administered by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Elon Musk fed “into the wood chipper” on a weekend in February. Kansas’s Republican lawmakers tried to save it but failed to persuade President Trump, who last month proposed cutting the entire 2026 budget for Food for Peace as well as another food aid program dear to Kansans, the McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition program.

[…]

It was the latest blow to farmers, particularly in Kansas, where about 80 percent of those on the high plains voted for Mr. Trump and agriculture makes up almost half of the state’s economy. The president’s whipsawing tariffs and cuts to agriculture grants and global food aid have left the state with swollen silos, shrinking markets and volatile prices for crops.

Last year Kansas sold half its annual wheat crop abroad, but those buyers have mostly dried up. At least one big grain broker is now trying to sell Kansas grain that once fed people overseas for use in dog food.

Paul Penner, a Kansas wheat farmer and former president of the National Association of Wheat Growers, is frustrated that there have not been more objections to the administration from wheat growers and the state’s largely Republican congressional delegation.

“We need people who are willing to speak up,” he said. “I think privately they say things, but publicly, no. And I’m not sure what their pain threshold is.”

I’m sure Trump will write them a check at some point. He loves to take credit for helping “his” farmers” when he destroys their livelihoods. And it could get them through the moment. But he’s already destroyed their long term markets by letting Elon take a chainsaw to USAID and alienating their global customers.

I don’t know how much pain they are prepared to take for their Dear Leader. I can’t understand why they’re willing to take any at this point. It’s not as if it’s World War Two and we all have to sacrifice. They’re taking these hits in order to punish non-white people and own the libs. Is it really worth it?

[Mysterian]

1. With that new republican $5 trillion debt ceiling,

the MAGA regime can borrow billions more from China and send the farmers a generous welfare check.

[rampartd]

2. which is exactly what he did in season 1

[EarthFirst]

3. Which dog food brand(s) are they reallocating their surpluses to?

I’ll be absolutely sure to avoid those brands…

[Norrrm]

4. Trump is taking away their markets and their workers. Don't need all that wheat now.

Don't worry. Trump will give more of that free socialist money. Count on it!