Trump's Coalition is Collapsing

Hold onto your hats, folks! Today's episode features political heavyweight Andrew Egger, joining the Heitkamps from The Bulwark, breaking down the current state of Donald Trump’s influence, the midterms’ future, and the perils lurking behind all that grievance for Heidi and Joel. If you thought Trump was invincible, think again. Andrew’s got the scoop that might just make you question everything.

In this episode:

• Andrew's take on whether Trump has worn out his welcome in American politics
• How Trump's coalition is changing and why midterm races might be brighter for Democrats
• The impact of Trump's foreign policy blunders and economic missteps on his base
• Insights into Iowa's surprising blue shift and rural America's economic pain points
• The peculiar pattern of Trump firing women in his cabinet—and what that says about his character
• The shifting power dynamics in Congress and why even insiders are starting to talk differently about him
• The global repercussions of Trump's economic policies and diplomatic missteps

Whether you're an annoyed voter, a political junkie, or just here for the laughs, this chat lays out the stakes in a way that's as sharp as Andrew's take on the Trump saga. Plus, a deep dive into the bizarre lawsuits, foreign policy flops, and the deepening schism in the GOP. It's like watching a slow-motion car crash—fascinating, inevitable, and possibly the end of an era.

Resources & Links:

• The Bulwark
• Andrew Egger’s Morning Shots Newsletter
• Echelon Insights polling in Iowa

And remember: If Trump is a cat, he’s probably on his eighth life. But this episode highlights the cracks in the armor, so buckle up. Things might just get interesting.

The Hot Dish is brought to you by the One Country Project. To learn more, visit OneCountryProject.org, or find us on Substack (Onecountryproject.substack.com), and on YouTube, Bluesky, and Facebook (@onecountryproject).

• (00:00) - Introduction to the Hot Dish Podcast
• (00:57) - Trump's Political Standing and Challenges
• (05:56) - The Impact of Trump's Actions on His Base
• (11:56) - Congressional Dynamics and Trump's Influence
• (18:46) - Public Perception and Trump's Leadership
• (19:53) - Economic Concerns and Political Implications
• (22:03) - Tax Refunds and Economic Reality
• (23:58) - Midterm Elections and Shifting Political Landscape
• (27:09) - Rural Economy Challenges and Farmer Perspectives
• (31:56) - Manufacturing and Economic Policy in Rural America
• (38:30) - Democratic Strategies for Rural America
• (39:52) - Trump's Economic Pitch and Its Consequences
• (41:48) - Gender Dynamics in Trump's Cabinet
• (44:30) - Closing Thoughts with Andrew Egger
• (45:59) - Understanding the Dispatch and Conservative Media
• (47:01) - Character and Leadership in Crisis
• (48:30) - Closing Thoughts with Heidi and Joel

Creators and Guests

Host

Heidi Heitkamp

U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp served as the first female senator elected from North Dakota from 2013 – 2019. he is the founder and Chair of the One Country Project, an organization focused on addressing the needs and concerns of rural America. Heidi was recently named the Director of the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, a university she has long been committed to and a place where she enjoys engaging with students over civic discussions while encouraging them to seek opportunities in public service to our country. Heidi also serves as a contributor to both CNBC and ABC News.

Host

Joel Heitkamp

He is an multi-award winning talk show host both regionally and nationally. Before radio, he served in the North Dakota Senate from 1995-2008.

Editor

Ismael Balderas-Wong

Head of Production at Voxtopica

Producer

Richard Fawal

Richard Fawal is founder and CEO of Voxtopica.

SC

Producer

Susanna Cassisa

What is The Hot Dish?

Former U.S. Senator Heidi Heitkamp and her brother, KFGO radio talk show host Joel Heitkamp, engage in animated discussions with newsmakers, elected leaders, and policymakers who are creating new opportunities for rural Americans and finding practical solutions to their challenges. Punctuated with entertaining conversations and a healthy dose of sibling rivalry, The Hot Dish, from the One Country Project, is informative, enlightening, and downright fun.

Heidi (00:04)
Welcome back to the hot dish, ⁓ comfort food for rural America. I'm Heidi Heitkamp.

Joel (00:09)
And I'm Joel Heitkamp. We're joined today by Andrew Egger. He is the White House correspondent for the Bulwark ⁓ and previously covered politics for the dispatch and the weekly standard. And in other words, he knows what he's doing. Andrew, welcome to the hot dish.

Andrew Egger (00:25)
Hey guys, thank you so much for having me on.

Heidi (00:28)
I want to point out you've spent a lot of time in conservative rooms, but a lot of never Trump conservative rooms.

Andrew Egger (00:35)
Yeah, I know,

you kind of find your way into a niche, right? But I'm excited to do this one, because my roots are Missouri and Iowa. My whole extended family is all around Iowa, so thanks for having me on.

Heidi (00:37)
Yeah.

Terrific, you're one of us. You're one of us Midwesterners.

Joel (00:47)
Yeah, Andrew,

you should meet my other sisters. This one here is pretty moderate, so.

Andrew Egger (00:54)
Hahaha!

Heidi (00:56)
Well, listen, Andrew, we are really excited and grateful, so grateful that you're here with me. We've been reading a lot of your articles and I think it's interesting because, you know, sitting in, you know, kind of doing my morning rounds of reading stuff, I get this sense that Donald Trump may be jumping the political shark, that he may in fact have worn his welcome out, not just among those people who have

from the very beginning, been appalled that he's our president, but ⁓ negative articles in the Wall Street Journal, a lot of pushback from Mega World. What are you seeing and what's your sense in Washington, DC and among the people that you pay attention to?

Andrew Egger (01:41)
Yeah, it's kind of funny because I think that after a decade of this guy being on the scene, there are a lot of people who are reluctant really ever to push that particular button to say, know, Donald Trump, the walls are closing in around him. You know, his future looks bleak. Yeah, just because, you know, we all lived through his first term when the Mueller investigation and all these different things where, you know, that sort of content was constantly in the headlines.

Heidi (01:56)
It's gonna get it? No.

Andrew Egger (02:07)
And what happened? He not only survived all of that, ⁓ and not only didn't go down in flames, but where a decade later he's back to being the president. And so a lot of people are of gun shy about all of that. But that being said, mean, really do think that it is actually true.

and getting truer by the day that this is a guy who is in real political trouble. that there's any Robert Mueller type figure who's gonna come over the horizon and save America from what's going on, but just in terms of normal, ordinary coalition politics. The coalition that the president put together in order to assemble his improbable run back to power in 2024 was a different coalition than his first time around. He retained his base and you know,

kept tacking people on. But he also made a lot of inroads with a lot of different population groups, young men, minorities, a lot of people who they didn't break for him majorities of any of these groups. But he made enough progress with a lot of them that it ended up assembling him a durable coalition. And I think that as late as, or I should say already last year, it was pretty clear as the year went on that this was not a sustainable.

coalition for the president that he had kind of cobbled them together on the backs of a lot of criticisms of the previous administration and on the backs of a lot of ⁓ frankly empty promises or even kind of self-contradictory promises in terms of you different promises going different directions to different people ⁓ that it really was not going to be possible even if you know the economy stayed pretty good ⁓ and you know he actually made progress toward a number of these different things. It was going to be very difficult to hold that coalition together under any circumstances.

⁓ And instead of that, what we saw is him basically doing a lot of active damage, right? I mean, the president not only putting us right back into the sort of constant treadmill of scandals and sort of outrages and controversies and, you know, openly pushing against different legal constructs and fighting against the courts and, sending ICE and US military into American cities ⁓ to sort of mix it up with citizens and not just illegal immigrants.

mean, just all of that stuff was already taking a toll and you could see that in the polling. So much so that, you know, by kind of the beginning of this year, was like, okay, the president has a lot of ground to make up ahead of these midterms. And instead of making up the ground, he has spent this entire year so far, you know, the first three and a half months of it.

punching new and additional holes in the bottom of his boat, right? And fighting a lot of new intra-coalitional fights. mean, like he's fighting with the Pope now. He has launched this war in Iran, which has a lot of different people really kind of uneasy and unhappy for a lot of different reasons. Certainly the people in his coalition who are extremely anti-war are not at all happy about this, but you don't have to have a lot of opinions about foreign policy. ⁓

to be unsettled by spikes in the price of energy, know, spikes in the price of a lot of things that are reliant on energy, spikes in the price of fertilizer, like anything you'd buy at the store. I mean, we're in a position where the first thing Donald Trump has to do is figure out how to get back to just where he was at the beginning of 2026, where he was already in a lot of trouble.

Heidi (05:29)
Andrew, he has to stop digging the hole deeper. mean, you know, when he was in a hole and he's dug the hole deeper and he's dug the hole deeper by alienating a lot of people in his base. And Joel, I know I ask you this question every time we're on because you talk to people in some of the most conservative places in America every day, not just on the radio, but in your day-to-day conversations.

Andrew Egger (05:33)
Yes, yes, it's.

Heidi (05:56)
So once again, your answer always is they have gone quiet. They aren't defending him. Have they started acknowledging that there is some real challenges that he is presenting to the American economy and the American people?

Joel (06:10)
Well, but you know, as you pointed out, you know, when you're in a hole, quit digging. I mean, he's got two big things there that he did for my area. My area is Catholic and it's Luther. Those are the two things it is. You don't punch the pope in the nose. ⁓ You just don't or you're going to get in trouble. Believe me, been there, done that. ⁓

You know, and so that's one. The other thing is my area is isolationism. I mean, it is even going back to every war this country fought. You've got a bunch of immigrants who are out there working land and their forefathers and mothers came here to get away from whatever country they were in. And they don't want that to be part of their life. And so there is another factor. And this question is for both of you that I want to ask. Is he?

Is he lost his game? Has he lost his game? Can he not physically, mentally do what he was saying, Andrew, before that kind of would cover his keister a little bit? You know, it just seems to me that he ain't up to this anymore.

Heidi (07:17)
So I'm going to just offer just an illustration and then we'll switch it over. Donald Trump has always kind of like his whole narrative is two-polars, right? I alone can fix it. I'm the most powerful person. I'm the smartest person in the room. And on the other end, I'm the biggest victim, right? I've been victimized, you know, the Russia hoax, which wasn't a hoax, read the reports.

⁓ And so he's always had this kind of dichotomy of ⁓ theory of his case. One is which I'm all powerful and the smartest guy in the room and can do whatever I want. And the other is I'm the most picked on, you know, I'm the biggest victim. I'd say to you, Joel, he's not projecting I'm powerful. He's projecting victimhood almost consistently. And I think that's one of his problems.

Joel (08:15)
Andrew, I'm curious for you. Does he still have game?

Andrew Egger (08:18)
Yeah, think it's it's I'm a little bit of two minds about it. Let me let me explain what I mean. I think that if you're talking specifically about the question of can Donald Trump like maintain sort of the magical hold on the Republican Party that he has had, you know, for going on a decade now, I have yet to see any real evidence that that is less effective than it used to be.

His endorsed candidates are still going to do extremely well all this year, especially any time he's picking a fight with a Republican specifically and trying to stand up a challenger to take them down. We really have not seen yet evidence that that dynamic has changed. At the same time, say that again? Well, yeah, right. mean, among Americans, among Republicans, let's say. Yeah, not so good around the world. Yeah, that didn't go so well for him in Hungary.

Joel (08:58)
Unless you're in Hungary, right? Unless you're in Hungary. ⁓ Right. OK.

Andrew Egger (09:09)
I would say, though, he is spreading himself so thin right now. mean, like, is... It's very clear that, like, when it comes to, you know, what is actually motivating the president, what he gets up in the morning to do. I mean, there are just a lot of different things he's trying to weigh in on, and that's true of every president, but for all of these personal crusades, like he's consumed with the war in Iran, he's consumed with the domestic economy here at home, an enormous amount of his time and attention is going to...

weird little things like his ballroom or like this criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve and the supposed cost overruns at that building or micromanaging the Kennedy Center, these sorts of things. And so when the president makes threats against, for instance, Congress or when he tries to sort of jawbone Congress into doing things a specific way, much more so than in years past,

We are really seeing Congress kind of just wait around until he stops paying attention and sort of wanders off to pay attention to something else. And then even Republicans in Congress are kind of just going back to doing what they were doing before. we've particularly seen that a couple of times this year. First of all, John Thune, the Senate Majority Leader, has consistently told the president, despite loud, loud pressure from Donald Trump, that he's not going to get rid of the Senate filibuster. So that's like one little component of it.

But when you look at, for instance, the shutdown that we have underway at the Department of Homeland Security, ⁓ where for the longest time, Democrats and Republicans were basically saying, basically the only way to solve this problem is to fund all of DHS except for ICE and Border Patrol, which Democrats had problems with, and that they'd figure out a separate way to fund those. The president said, absolutely not. Will we go with this plan? In fact, we're not only

not going to do this particular compromise, but I actually don't want to see any movement on anything until you pass my voting bill, until you pass the Save America Act. I mean, he drew what seemed to be a very firm line in the sand about that. But then what happened? He kind of wandered off and started paying attention to other things. The Senate got back around to doing the negotiating they'd been doing before. And now we're moving toward, you know, this same resolution of this partial shutdown that the negotiators in Congress wanted to see happen.

with no Save America Act in sight. And the Save America Act seems to have basically sort of floated away to wherever sort of legislation that just kind of vanishes goes when it dies, right? I mean, that's just, that is just one concrete example of the president not really running the show. It's not like Congress is running the show either. mean, that is also a gigantic power vacuum right now. But the president's kind of snap his fingers and make things rearrange the way he wants it to. Whatever power he used to have to do that has absolutely to.

Heidi (11:44)
Yeah.

Yeah, but you're saying it's not because they, ⁓ you know, fear him. It's just that he loses attention, ⁓ doesn't pay attention, and then all of a sudden the deal gets done. so, you know, I would tell you, John Thune doesn't have the votes to eliminate the filibuster. So, I mean, and that's what he keeps telling the president. Look, you can talk all you want, but this is not going to happen. ⁓ And it's not because of my leadership. It's because they're just some hard

Andrew Egger (12:13)
Mm-hmm.

Heidi (12:26)
felt beliefs in the uniqueness of the United States Senate, whether people agree with that or not. you know, so let's talk about this balance. And I remember Cory Gardner, who was from Colorado, ran in a very tough year. I think he ran in my year 18, right after Donald Trump.

Andrew Egger (12:34)
Mm-hmm.

Heidi (12:50)
Trump got elected and that was a good year for Republicans, not such a good year for me, but a good year for Democrats. And Corey, you everybody thought Corey would run away from the president, but he couldn't because he was joined at the hip. But do you see any members of Congress, especially in the House of Representatives, those swing districts, do you see them, you know, kind of subtly moving away from the president, sending messages? You know, I'm my own person. I represent my

my constituency, I don't represent a political party. Is there any of that in the kind of political rhetoric that's going on right now as we lead into the midterms?

Andrew Egger (13:31)
Yeah, honestly, so far it's less than you'd necessarily expect, right? I I think a lot of Republicans are in a bind right now where it would be nice if they could do that, right? But the narrative that is coming out of the RNC, certainly the narrative that is coming out of the White House is very clear. We have one path to maintain our majorities ⁓ despite the historical trends of losing them after a president's re-elected. And that path is to

to the president to really accentuate his strengths. mean, it is almost impossible, first of all, to get away from the question of Donald Trump in politics today, just period. Like, even if you want to run that strategy, like, your voters are hardly even gonna let you to say nothing of your opponents. Like, he's the guy. I Congress is not doing its own stuff at all. Everything in kind of political discourse and what's happening in America right now revolves, I should say, around this one man.

And even if that weren't the case, even if it were still the case that like you could run on, well, look at this stuff that I got in the farm bill or whatever. ⁓ Donald Trump personally won't let you do that. Donald Trump personally does not want ⁓ individual Republican candidates out there making him look bad on kind of social media or whatever by running a bunch of content that is basically predicated on, well, you feel this way about Donald Trump, but here's why you should like me even if you don't like him.

Right? That is a recipe for ⁓ basically getting cut off from the entire Republican ⁓ ecosystem and infrastructure, which is basically staffed top to bottom at this point with straight up Donald Trump loyalists and inviting sort of like nuclear ⁓ destruction via truth social post of your campaign, you know, even over and above that. So it's really a tricky spot.

that some of these swing district guys are in, even setting aside just the pretty grotesque political environment for Republicans right now.

Joel (15:30)
But I go back to what I asked of both of you. He's made mistakes. He's made mistakes that have kind of gone out there and everybody was like, wow, that's the one that got him. And then the next day it's no big deal and other mistakes and it's no big deal. I don't know, making yourself look like Jesus Christ is not the way to go.

And that was a pretty big mistake, you guys. ⁓ That was a big time mistake. And I think it played into the whole fight with the pope. I think it played into ⁓ Congress living in fear versus now going home because they know that there's in many of their constituents eyes one more or one person way more powerful than the president. And that's the actual ⁓ Jesus Christ. And so, you know, to me,

He's just making mistakes that you know, one of the things Andrew that the people that tune into my show that call into my show ⁓ asked me one time and I think they believe the same thing. They said, can't you say anything positive about this president? I challenge you to say something positive about this president. And I said to them, I said, well, the one thing that that I will say positive is he kept his word. He's kept us out of war.

can't say that anymore. I can't and they don't like it either. They would applaud me for saying that because that's one of the reasons they voted for him. So mark that down Andrew is another mistake.

Andrew Egger (17:01)
Yeah, and I think that when it comes to these little micro controversies, know, the stuff that we have a new one every day or every week, like going to fight against the Pope or like that AI generated image of Trump as Jesus Christ, ⁓ there's a big difference between the way those stories played during his first term and the way they play now. Because during his first term, he was presiding over a pretty strong economy and a pretty stable kind of world.

picture, right? There were not a lot of these conflicts sort of bubbling up all the time. And so when his base or even just people who were inclined to kind of like him would see those little things, they kind of, it was easy for them to kind of brush them off as like, know, like the whole mean tweets argument, right? Like, like, look, he's he can be kind of crazy. He can be kind of mean. He can be kind of whatever the way he is online with all these little micro controversies. But at the end of the day, you know, the ship is basically pointed in the right direction.

And that was the way they kind of accommodated themselves to that. Now, it's the opposite. people have strong and growing worries about the economy. They have strong and growing worries about the stability of the world and America's place in it. And because of those kind of base level worries, that primes them to be a lot more hostile to the micro controversies that bubble up because they don't have the same just kind of

general confidence that things are basically going okay. And so that leaves them in a position where when they see this, that, or the other crazy thing coming off of the president, ⁓ it's easier for them to just to actually make those sort of load-bearing pillars of the way they think about politics. It's like, the president said that crazy thing, and I can't really put that in a little, I can't compartmentalize that away in a box. Maybe he said that crazy thing because he's crazy. And maybe the fact that he's crazy is also responsible for a lot of this other stuff that's happening right now.

Heidi (18:46)
No.

Andrew Egger (18:51)
And so it all kind of builds toward one narrative of, you know, growing, accumulating discomfort with the way things are going in the White House.

Heidi (18:57)
Yeah,

you know, a slogan that ⁓ LBJ used against ⁓ Goldwater in the 1964 election was, in your guts, you know he's nuts. you know, it's looking more and more like people are like, yeah, this isn't going so well. And I think he's not aging well. And I mean that in, you know, in the truest sense of the word, he looks tired.

Andrew Egger (19:11)
Hahaha

Heidi (19:25)
Like I said, he's angrier, he's got more grievance. Before when he would say crazy things, you could see him kind of wink at the audience like, you're all in on the joke. And now he's taking his own rhetoric seriously. Yeah, I know. But he also can bring it when he needs to bring it, but he's not bringing it the way he used to.

Andrew Egger (19:39)
Mm-hmm.

Joel (19:43)
Well, he's 80.

Heidi (19:53)
And so I wanna switch to what does this mean politically in terms of the midterms? Yeah.

Joel (19:57)
Wait, wait, Heidi, I

want to I want to ask you a question first that goes back to what Andrew just said. ⁓ There's a belief out there that all this is going to change when the war is over in whatever fashion he'll spin that we won and he'll say that he did this or that when, in fact, we all know this was a billion dollar a day bar tab. But I want to ask you, Heidi.

Heidi (20:09)
at all.

Joel (20:21)
about the economy because there's a belief that when the war is over, the economy is going to start clicking. You've made the case many times that prior to all of this, it wasn't doing so good. And so I want to I want to hear your your take on it now.

Heidi (20:36)
Well, we have the lowest consumer confidence numbers in decades. People sense that things are not going well in their own individual pocketbooks. They don't see, even on the horizon, they don't see inflation coming down. Even if he touts that gas prices go down where they were before the war started, that's still not enough. And so people have uncertainty about artificial intelligence and what that means for their jobs.

You're seeing this effect, not just the uncertainty, not just among blue collar workers, you're seeing it in those middle level professionals who, accountants who see their profession completely changing and have a great deal of uncertainty and wanna know what the answer is. And so the fact that he has pivoted away from domestic policy, and I think it's all in the noble pursuit for a

for a Nobel Peace Prize. I mean, that's how incredibly you start a war so you can get a Peace Prize. Doesn't seem like a good strategy to me, but I think in many ways that's what's in the back of his mind. I think that he can't help the economy recover because he doesn't have the right formula for that. He's not willing to make the right investments. Now he's touting Joel, the big, beautiful bill and look at an additional $3,000.

⁓ Increase in people's tax refunds doesn't talk about what the actual tax liability was But I I did some research yesterday and said what for a married couple earning a ⁓ Thousand or a hundred thousand dollars or less, which is you know, the bulk of the people who file tax returns What is the total increase on average not just per individual but on average? ⁓ Meaning some would get more and some would get less especially those with kids

It was only $350 and he's already cost them that in extra fuel charges, extra dollars. And so he doesn't have any policy initiatives to fall back on that are meaningful at all. And they're putting all their eggs in the big, beautiful bill basket. And that is really foolish because people actually file tax returns and they actually get the refunds. And those refunds that they're touting are not what people thought they would be.

he doesn't have an economic strategy right now, other than, know, ⁓ trust me, it'll get better. And people don't trust him anymore on the economy. You see that over and over in the polls. And so this is not, he was in an economic hole before this war started. He dug that hole deeper with increase in fuel prices and with more uncertainty in terms of investment. He's back to a tariff regime that

He just refuses to give up on tariffs and he doesn't have, he's not responding to the economic conditions that are on the ground and that's gonna hurt him. And it's definitely gonna hurt the folks in the midterms, his party in the midterms. I wanna talk about the midterms because I think Andrew, you and I were talking before we got on the podcast about Iowa.

Andrew Egger (23:58)
Mm-hmm.

Heidi (23:58)
And I want to throw Ohio in there too. So today, you said there's new numbers out that shows some pretty remarkable ⁓ numbers for Democrats in Iowa. Let's talk about that.

Andrew Egger (24:12)
Yeah, so this was just ⁓ an Echelon Insights poll, which is a Republican ⁓ polling group out here, I guess a polling group that a lot of Republican ⁓ campaigns use, but they're well respected ⁓ for the work that they do. And they polled a number of these swing state races. ⁓ I don't have all the numbers in front of me. I could pull them up. But the one that really stood out to me, first of all, it has a Democratic candidates doing pretty well across a lot of these sort of battleground governor's races.

But the one in Iowa was the one that was really shocking because Iowa has just taken, I mean, it used to be a purple state. My whole family's from Iowa. I lived there for a few years. Myself as a kid, I remember, you know, basically just, ⁓ you know, ping ponging back and forth with Democratic and Republican governors and senators and congressmen. And in the last five or six or eight years, it has been getting redder, redder, redder, redder, redder. ⁓

State government had Republican supermajorities. I might still have Republican supermajorities currently under under governor kim reynolds who was who was you know elected very Overwhelmingly, I would say I mean it just right now. It's got four Republican congressmen. mean it's a congressman and congresswomen It is it's just a republican state really. It has looked that way recently Rob sand is currently the only statewide elected democrat there. He's the state auditor, you know, it's not like a super

famous or limelighty role, but he has managed to turn that role into a pretty powerful sort of just anti-corruption, pro-transparency campaign for governor, where he's basically saying, you know, this single party rule thing is not working out. People are cutting corners. Money is being made, you know, sort of unfairly. They have actually made it harder to audit where your government money is going.

And I guess I'm burying the lead here. He did really well in the poll. It was a 51-39 split for Sand, this Democratic candidate for governor, over his likeliest Republican rival, which is Congressman Randy Feenstra. And I don't know, we have not seen a lot of polling ⁓ of that race so far. I know that Sand's campaign has polled it.

And they have liked what they've seen, or at that's what they've said to me, but they've never let me see their numbers. I was just of taking their word for it, or as much as you can. But this was the kind of poll result that really pulls you up short. Because even if that's an overstatement, which maybe it is, ⁓ we all remember the Ann Selzer poll of Iowa that had Kamala up two points right at the end, going into the 2024 election. But what it's showing is this guy is a strong candidate in this ⁓

Heidi (26:29)
Hahaha

Andrew Egger (26:55)
rural ⁓ Midwestern state that we had all just kind of assumed was pretty Republican, at least for this political era. And he seems to have picked or be in the process of picking some kind of lock there.

Heidi (27:09)
Well, you know, I will say this, that last time I checked, the gross state product of Iowa is negative. So, you know, James Carville is not wrong. It's about the economy. And Joel, you talk to farmers every day. Fertilizer prices are going up, input prices are high, interest rates remain high. And because of the war, and the inflation driven by the war, it's not likely that the Fed is going to reduce interest rates anytime soon.

huge input for a lot of farmers is their interest costs. So how much of this is that Andrew's talking about in Iowa, do you think is people really not, in rural America, maybe they're not talking about it at the coffee shop, but when people call them and ask how happy they are, they're saying, I'm not happy and I want to vote for a change.

Joel (27:58)
Well, there's a couple of things going on. Number one, most farmers don't raise cattle anymore. So beef prices are very high, but it doesn't matter because not many of them ⁓ raise cattle. ⁓ Number two, there's two kinds of farmers out there. Andrew, there's the farmers that have made it.

and yet they're still farming. They tend to be 60 years and older and they're not as worried because they're pre-buying. have the cash to pre-buy fertilizer, pre-buy fuel, those type of things, input costs, all of that. But that middle-aged farmer.

That young farmer that's just trying to get a rolling. can't afford the cash rent anymore. He can't afford to fertilize anymore. He didn't have the money last fall to pre buy all the fertilizer he wanted. And so he's not getting the operating loans and he's certainly not getting the amount he wants from the bank. And the bank is telling him, you know what? We're going backwards for two years in a row here and I can't continue to you've been part of our family for a long time. It isn't a war.

going on between the banker and the farmer. That's just numbers. And there's another factor there, you two. You know, remember the big press announcement from the Trump administration and from the Ag Department about the deal they struck with China. China hasn't bought one soybean since then. Not one. ⁓ And these farmers know it. They're not moving any of their product, Andrew. They're not moving the soybeans.

Andrew Egger (29:30)
Yeah, and I, this is one of those stories too. I'm curious what you make of this, because obviously your ear is much more to the ground than mine is. But ⁓ this is, it has seemed to me, this is a long-term compounding story going all the way back to the first Trump administration, right? mean, farmers were like the key demographic that were really squeezed by even his first round of tariffs, his first trade war with China.

which did lead to the drying up of a lot of Chinese purchasing of US soybeans and re-diverted a lot of China's buying to Brazil, which was a giant windfall for Brazilian farmers to then stand up their operations where even after ⁓ some trade deals were struck and the situation re-stabilized a little bit, you're still dealing with, if you're a US soybean farmer, you're still dealing with a Brazilian market that.

was more muscular than before. And now we're just doing the same thing again, right? Where it's again, a trade war with China and now, and not just a trade war with China, but a trade war with pretty much everybody, where you have all of these, ⁓ you know, world supply chains that are getting re-snarled and they're all having to rework one another out to leave America out of a lot of them. And if you're a soybean farmer, it's not like there's a lot of extra places to send that stuff. You were not growing soybeans

for the US market. That just wasn't primarily what you were expecting when you itemized into that in the first place. so you're sort of stuck. You're left hoping that you have a president who has already kind of cut the legs out from under you economically. And you're just kind of stuck waiting for him maybe to throw you a bone, do another farm bailout, like they did the first time around, which they've announced ⁓ the second time around. I actually don't know whether that...

has gone into effect. Maybe you do. But it's like, that's not the situation any of these people wanted to be in in the first place, where instead of actually being able to just farm and then sell their produce at a fair price, instead they have to farm and wait for a handout from the very institution of the federal government that made it impossible for them to sell in the first place. so it's, I think a lot of farmers gave him a lot of grace the first time around. They were like, well, maybe this is necessary. Maybe we really need, maybe we really

Maybe we really do need to re-stabilize ⁓ our trade relationship with China ⁓ in a short-term pain for long-term gain sort of way. I'm not 100 % sure everybody is as enthused about that the second time.

Heidi (31:56)
Well, the other thing I would say about the rural economy that doesn't get talked enough about is it's also manufacturing. Manufacturing small manufacturers all across the rural economy are part of a supply chain for whether it's for Boeing or for Caterpillar. And a lot of Iowa's economy are these smaller manufacturing groups who have been hit by additional tariffs on steel. And, you know, think of the irony of this guy saying you got to buy American steel, but when he's building his big, beautiful ballroom,

That's not what he's doing. He's not buying American steel, right? But yet the small mom and pop shops, manufacturing shops are struggling. And so I think, and you look at the manufacturing numbers, there's no economist thinks that you're gonna bring back that much employment. They think it's gonna be automation. They think that a lot of this may in fact stabilize national security as it relates to the supply chain.

but it's not gonna bring back the level of employment that you saw in the 50s, 60s and 70s. And so, he's not talking about the economy of the future. Trump talks about the economy of the past. And he's in part because he's not a visionary and I'm gonna say it, I don't think he's very smart. And I don't think he can pivot away from kind of grievance and they don't make them like they did in the old day kind of grandpa.

get off my yard kind of attitude, right? You know, could just see him shaking his fist at Europe, get off my yard. I mean, you know, there is no charm about him. And at the same time, you see Carney out there saying, look, we're decoupling from the United States economy. I don't know what that means for the USMCA, the United States, ⁓ Canada, Mexico trade agreement. But I will tell you that

the global economy, and I've spent a lot of time, global leaders, I was in Munich and spent a lot of time talking to folks consistently about this, they're pivoting away. And that pivots real and it's permanent unless something happens to bring them back. And sending JD Vance to national security meetings to insult our allies is not the way to do it. And so a major charm offensive is what we need.

with traditional allies in the global south, but we're not going to get it because it's not in Trump's DNA.

Andrew Egger (34:24)
Yeah, I mean, some of these stories, it's just the kind of stuff that like really makes you sick at heart to talk about, right? I mean, it's just there's a reason why Trump and his sort of economic populism pitch struck such a chord with so many people in so many of these like kind of more hollowed out or hollowing out parts of the country, because they just it's true that they just didn't really feel like anybody else had a plan for them and that they were just kind of being left behind. But unfortunately, the thing that Trump pitched was

smoke and mirrors across a whole bunch of these different policy areas. And it really was just kind of like a put your trust in me, I'm gonna put it back the way it was. And it was never based on anything. has only ever, his attempts to put something like that into practice have only left these places poorer and worse off and more desperate than they were before. But it's also true that it's not like there's any other super great plan. mean, I don't know, maybe you're more familiar with what's going on in democratic policy circles.

than I am. But my basic understanding is just that some of this stuff is just inevitable. it's awful that that's the case and it's tragic that that's the case. And it is also awful and tragic that Trump has sort of accelerated the demise of some of these places by, again, optioning into these policies that have made them worse off in the short term. But it's just a sad, tragic story that the ongoing

sort of move of the American economy away from small towns, away from rural areas that, I don't know, maybe there's something in the pipeline that will end up being useful in terms of revitalizing this. In theory, we're all globally connected now and it should be plausible, possible to work your C-suite job for a Fortune 500 company from Davenport, Iowa or something like that.

or from the farmstead that you bought an hour outside, Davenport, Iowa. But it doesn't seem like that's the direction things are really moving. ⁓ I don't know. Like I said, watching Trump's ⁓ failed kind of like carny pitch to these areas succeed is not like a fun thing to watch. It's all really sad.

Joel (36:36)
So, Andrew, let me give you an example of what Heidi's talking about though. My old legislative district for 14 years, I represented these folks and they built Bobcats. They built skid steers and they ran three shifts and people would fight to get hired ⁓ at Bobcat. When word got out that, hey, you you got hired at Bobcat. It was like high five. Let's go have a beer time. Right.

Andrew Egger (37:02)
Mm-hmm.

Joel (37:02)
And that was

the third shift. That was the crap shift. know, so in the middle of the night, you're building Bobcats. They've gone to two shifts now, two, and you can get hired at Bobcat tomorrow if you walk through the door. The problem is, and going back to your comment about you don't know if there's another plan, is you got to want to buy them.

Right? mean, if you make them, somebody's got to want to buy them. And if construction's down, they're not buying them. If a farm economy is down, they're not buying them. I just put my used Bobcat up for sale because I bought a different one. I guess I did buy one, but I bought a different one. But the truth is, I couldn't get rid of it. And I took Heidi five grand less than what I posted it for. So don't start laughing at me. But I mean, here's the thing, Andrew, it's not going well out here.

Andrew Egger (37:40)
You

Joel (37:53)
It's not, you know, people might look like they got a new pickup in front of church, but it's just the same color is all it is.

Heidi (38:01)
Yeah, I mean, it's going to be interesting. And I do have to put a plug when you say there's no one paying attention. We're paying attention. And this is my passion, rural policy, working with a number of think tanks and going across the country, looking at what's working for rural America. What isn't? The problem is that we suffer from the... You remember when Dukakis said people in Iowa who were struggling during the farm crisis, they should go and dive? Yeah.

That was not helpful for the Democratic Party to be so brain dead about what could actually make money. And so it's really important that these solutions have practical applications and that we not abandon rural America. But I'm telling you that the Democratic Party, it's not enough to say, look how bad Donald Trump is and what he's done. They better come with the plan and they'd better be willing to implement that plan. And I think there's...

a lot of good thinking that's going on out there. So we'll see what happens. But, you know, it's the same thing I said, you know, what's Donald Trump's problem? Donald Trump's problem is that he doesn't have a plan for the economy to improve and everything that he loves, tariffs, tax cuts for rich people so it can trickle down. Those things don't work to ignite the economy. You know, I do think that an interest rate cut would provide some stimulus.

in places and save some people some money. But I don't think that the guy that if you're living hand to mouth and you're now putting necessities on a credit card, do know what that credit card interest is? It's 30%, 28%, 30%. And that's what people are reacting to. And so how do you fix that? I think the Democratic Party needs to step up with some good ideas too.

Andrew Egger (39:44)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. And look, like just, just from, from my personal point of view on all of this stuff, like my dad was a, was a, my dad is a Lutheran pastor. My dad was a parish pastor in rural Northwest Iowa for a chunk of my childhood near Storm Lake, Iowa. my, have another grandpa who lives in Whatchier, Iowa, South Keokuk County, South Central Iowa, really small town. He's been a pastor there for his entire career, basically. ⁓ so they very familiar with like the rural and small town, Iowa, ⁓ the, the, people there and everything, even though I've been, you know, way out East now for a decade. ⁓ but.

But I just think like the thing about Donald Trump, right? mean, the economic revival pitch that he made is basically kaput. There are probably still people out there who are waiting, really just kind of hoping against hope for it to land. But there are not as many people as before doing that. Part of the problem though, and part of his durability with his base is that that's not the whole pitch, right? mean, his other big attraction to a lot of these people is that, you

the way that they feel sort of economically forgotten and economically sort of downtrodden and the sort of despair and cynicism that that has sort of bred in them for a long time. He also has a very powerful emotional pitch to them in kind of the negative way in the sense of like, well, you know, maybe I'm not actually going to land this plane of revitalizing your rural area or revitalizing your town, but at least I can sort of offer you the satisfaction of watching from afar while I go after all of your enemies and the people that you sort of perceived did this to you in the first place. ⁓ And

I have not seen any indication that Trump is at all trying to take his foot off the gas as far as that's concerned, right? I it's still very much ⁓ a presidency that's focused on punishing his personal enemies, punishing the sort of perceived enemies of the Republican Party, whether that be, you know, just elites or Democrats or the media or whoever. ⁓ And I think that, you know, that is going to be the thing that sort of absent some actual solutions like the like the thing that you're talking about. ⁓ That sort of that sort of powerful negative pitch is not going to go away.

Heidi (41:48)
Yeah. Well, Andrew, from now on, I'm going to call you PK. Preacher's kid.

Joel (41:49)
Well, and this is this is why I'm think ⁓ this

Andrew Egger (41:54)
Do it.

That's right.

Joel (41:55)
this and by the way, you Lutheran sing every verse. My wife's Lutheran and I'm Catholic. So I know all about this. But let me just say this. I should run for president then because I do have a plan. The first thing I do is take all the damn tariffs off. You know, let's see what rock and rolls after that. ⁓ You know, Andrew, I saw a piece that you wrote saying Donald Trump only fires women.

and that other people certainly have qualified ⁓ for being fired, whether it be Hakeseth or Patel or whatever. ⁓ Speak to the piece that you wrote.

Andrew Egger (42:28)
So this has been a strange thing, right? mean, first of all, for basically the whole first year of Trump 2.0, there were hardly any firings at all, at least relative to the first term when it was like a revolving door, seemed like there were constantly, there was a lot of palace intrigue about who was in and who was out. Really the only guy he lost the whole first term, was not a cabinet administrator was, I believe his national security advisor, not a cabinet secretary, I should say, his national security advisor, Michael Walls, who,

You if you guys remember Signalgate, he was kind of the guy who was holding the bag for Signalgate when they brought the editor in chief of the Atlantic on ⁓ a highly classified military planning signal text. But recently, it has sort of transpired that we have this new pattern ⁓ of the women. The women in the cabinet have been having a tough time with it. was Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security. Then it was Pam Bondi, the attorney general. And now just yesterday, it was the labor secretary, ⁓ Lori Chavez de Raemer.

who have now been out on their ear. And I don't know exactly how to parse this. I don't know if there is actually some specific thing that's firing one way in Donald Trump's mind for the women and another way for the men. ⁓ Obviously there are still a lot of women that he surrounds himself with that he seems to think are doing a good job. His chief of staff, Susie Wiles, is a very trusted member of the administration. His spokeswoman, Carolyn Levitt, the press secretary for the administration. ⁓

is obviously very much in Trump's good books. But it is odd because it's not like these are the only people who have covered themselves in scandal in his cabinet. mean, Pete Hegseth is out there making a new interesting headline every day. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ⁓ This is also not a cabinet member, but Cash Patel, the director of the FBI, who has been fighting some interesting new allegations of his own. So yeah, that's the situation as we see it so far is that he seems to have

Heidi (44:09)
You

Andrew Egger (44:23)
the women in his cabinet in some ways on a shorter leash than the men, but we'll see if he gets around to some of the fellas anytime soon.

Joel (44:30)
Well, Andrew, ⁓ we took more of your time than we said we were going to take. So I appreciate it. know, from my standpoint, and Heidi always gets the last thank you to the guests. But thank you. Thanks for joining us here on The Hot Dish.

Heidi (44:44)
Well, I hope you come back because I am going to call you now PK. And for those folks out there, that's a preacher's kid. And in small town America, they were always the wildest. They were always the least disciplined. So tell us, Andrew.

Andrew Egger (44:52)
That's right, I've heard that many times, many times in my life.

Not me, Heidi. I was actually,

I was pretty good. I didn't run into that stereotype until later. Maybe I could have made better use of it, but no, I mostly toed the line.

Heidi (45:09)
Well, in the Catholic

world, we would say you weren't an altar boy. You weren't an altar boy. And Joel was, and that didn't make any difference either. So there you go. Yeah. At least you didn't steal the wine, Joel. Did you?

Joel (45:13)
Yeah. It did help, Andrew. It did help.

Andrew Egger (45:13)
Right.

Hahaha.

Joel (45:24)
Yeah, well,

as far as you know.

Heidi (45:28)
Listen, Andrew, I hope you come back. This has been fun. you know, the predictions of his demise have always been premature. And he's like a cat, he's got nine lives, but I wonder if he isn't on his eighth, you know.

Andrew Egger (45:38)
Yep.

That's

the best thing. You can bring me back and you can throw it back in my face when he obviously survives yet again despite all these predictions. No, thank you guys for having me. It was fun.

Heidi (45:50)
Take care,

you bet. Thanks for joining us on the hot dish.

Heidi (45:56)
Well, that was an interesting conversation, Joel.

an interesting conversation with a guy who kind of knows a little bit about our part of the world, ⁓ and, you know, kind of keeping his finger on the pulse still, kind of moving forward. And so ⁓ he had previously, you know, basically represented, ⁓ wrote about politics at the Dispatch and the Weekly Standard. And for those folks who don't really know,

what those publications are. They're very conservative publications, but not Trump publications.

Joel (46:28)
Yeah, and now working for the Bullwork. And I have to tell you, if you follow that very closely, you're going to see a seed bag in the background that says Binto, North Dakota. Are you not, Hyde?

Heidi (46:39)
Yes, that's Tim Miller's, but to be fair, that didn't belong to him. It was his husband's, Tyler, who was my legislative ⁓ assistant for agriculture. And so we have a good connection with Tim and Tim is one of those people who just walked away from Republican politics because it just was so toxic.

and ⁓ lack character. I think, Joel, in some ways, I think that what we're seeing right now, when you elect someone who doesn't have character, who doesn't have honesty, who is narcissistic, when you get to crisis, crisis that he created, to be fair, he just can't react. And the Wall Street Journal story that everybody should look at was the one that during the rescue of the two airmen who were shot down over Iran,

the military people basically wanted him out of the situation room. That is a, if that report is right, if the Wall Street Journal, and it's not some rump organization, if the Wall Street Journal report is right, Joel, that military people can't have him in the room when they're making major decisions, that should terrify us.

Joel (47:50)
Yeah, well, it goes back to ⁓ when you and I built that first Lake cabin and all that spare wood. I lit the fire. I was one of the ones that put it out. ⁓ When you light the fire, you shouldn't get credit when you put it out. know, and by the way, it almost cost us the Lake cabin. Wasn't one of my brighter moves.

Heidi (48:10)
But you know, at that point, the Lake Gava wasn't really worth much. You could go scrounge up a few more two by fours. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, from humble beginnings, Joel, thanks so much again for co-hosting with me. It's always fun. It's always fun when you have a bright, smart young man on with us.

Joel (48:14)
No, we could have started all over again. Yeah.

Yup.

Yeah,

and I could tell you, you can learn a lot more about us at One Country by going to onecountryproject.org and be sure and I mean it. Be sure to follow us on Substack, Facebook and Blue Sky.

Heidi (48:44)
Yeah, when we'll be back next week with more hot dish, comfort food for rural America.