U.S. Reps. Tom Tiffany and Derrick Van Orden were hyped on Friday afternoon, yelling to the crowd at a Chippewa Falls “farm roundtable” about how great President Donald Trump is for American farmers and how thrilling it was to have him here in Wisconsin. Was that flop sweat on their glistening foreheads?

Trump’s approval rating hit a new low of 38% according to a Marquette poll released two days before his rural Wisconsin visit, with most respondents saying Democrats do a better job handling the economy. In rural Wisconsin, the Northern Ag Network reports, high fuel and fertilizer prices have been weighing heavily on farmers ever since Trump began his protracted military entanglement in Iran, while farm income is down and projected to drop further this year.

Van Orden, who is trying to hold onto his 3rd Congressional District seat and Tiffany, who wants to be Wisconsin’s next governor, have been faithful to Trump, voting for his “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” with its historic cuts to Medicaid and food assistance that will fall especially hard on rural areas. The five-year, $50 billion rural healthcare fund added to the bill in the U.S. Senate — which Van Orden touted at the Chippewa Falls event — will not come close to making up for the OBBA’s $137 billion in permanent Medicaid cuts to rural areas, according to KFF health policy research. Those cuts will lead to the closure of rural hospitals and, combined with the rollback of the Affordable Care Act, will leave an estimated 30,000 Wisconsinites without healthcare.

Trump’s visit to Wisconsin was a kind of Hail Mary. “Who’s excited that Donald J. Trump is here?” Ag Secretary Brooke Rollins shouted hoarsely. “Can I get an amen?”

President Trump listens to U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden as he praises Trump administration ag policy at a forum Friday June 5, 2026 in Chippewa Falls (Screenshot via the Official White House Rapid Response account on X)

It was not an intellectual appeal. As Henry Redman reports, the so-called roundtable mostly consisted of a meandering speech by Trump, who insulted Democrats, mocked former President Joe Biden and showed pictures of his revamp of the Washington, D.C. reflecting pool. Instead of policy, the event offered vibes. But vibes can only do so much to overcome the cold, hard economic reality confronting rural voters.

Tiffany and Van Orden, who helped inflict Trump’s disastrous policies on rural Wisconsinites, are hoping Trump’s star power will propel them to victory.

Wisconsin GOP Chair Brian Schimming took a stab at justifying the cognitive dissonance that will require of Republican voters, telling the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that Trump is forcing them to go through pain now so that he can fix long-term structural problems and bring them future prosperity.

It was a pretty good try. Wisconsin farmers have demonstrated tremendous resilience in the face of brutal economic cycles. Those who are still around have persevered as more than half of the state’s dairy farms disappeared over the last two decades, through both Democratic and Republican administrations. Trump has denounced the global trade deals embraced by both political parties and promised to stop global trade from harming U.S. workers and farmers. For people who lived through massive consolidation, vertical integration and the commodification of farm products that sent prices plummeting, major structural change, even if it involves some short-term pain, sounds good. But how much longer can those early promises stay fresh? And how much faith do voters have that Trump really has a long-term plan?

In Chippewa Falls, Trump spent a lot of time bragging about better than expected recent jobs numbers and ignoring underlying weaknesses in the economy that are a danger sign. He complained that the stock market didn’t share his rosy outlook. And he crowed about stopping illegal immigration, telling Wisconsin farmers who rely heavily on immigrant labor that he has stopped “people from mental institutions” and “murderers” from coming across the border. Wisconsin farmers are the wrong crowd for that red meat.

The most significant thing Trump said, before rushing through the brief “roundtable” section of the program, leaving just enough time for the assembled Republican politicians, two athletes, a beer company executive and one farmer to shower him with praise, was a promise of a massive farm subsidy. “I got $28 billion for the farmers in the first term,” he said, referring to the Market Facilitation Program that paid out big checks to farmers just before the 2020 election, to offset the effects of tariffs and trade wars. Once again, he said, he’s “working on something” to help farmers, “because what happened to you was artificial.”

Van Orden and Tiffany are hoping that will be enough to stave off reality a little bit longer.

Originally published by Wisconsin Examiner, a nonprofit news organization.

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