Former Republican strategist Rick Wilson described Friday how the financial crisis among American farmers has become a political crisis for the GOP ahead of the midterm elections.
In his Substack Friday, the co-founder of anti-Trump organization The Lincoln Project, discussed how some of President Donald Trump's most loyal voters have been facing an alarming economic reality.
"Welcome to the 'Find Out' phase of the most expensive political experiment in American history. As we enter 2026, rural America is learning a hard truth: you can’t eat 'owning the libs,' and you can’t pay a mortgage with Facebook memes," Wilson wrote.
"In 2024, rural America didn’t just vote for Donald Trump—it formed a suicide pact with him," Wilson wrote. "In the nation’s 444 farming-dependent counties, Trump pulled in nearly 78% of the vote. Those same counties are now watching multi-generational family farms get fed into the woodchipper of MAGA-nomics. It’s the purest Leopards Eating People’s Faces moment yet, and the leopards are ordering seconds."
As the Trump administration implemented sweeping tariffs, it took a major hit on farmers' incomes.
"For farmers, this wasn’t 'winning'—it was a state-sponsored execution," Wilson wrote. "China, once the buyer of half of all U.S. soybean exports, walked away entirely. By 2026, major crops were bleeding red ink: corn down $169 an acre, soybeans $114, cotton nearly $400."
"Net farm income is projected to collapse by $41 billion this year—a 23% drop and one of the sharpest declines in decades. Farmers aren’t tightening belts; they’re checking whether the barn rafters will hold," he added.
But that wasn't the only blow to farmers. The Trump administration's aggressive immigration policies were the next strike. By threatening the people who work in the fields at-risk of arrest, farmers were left with even more problems.
"If tariffs were the heart attack, immigration policy was the stroke," Wilson wrote. "MAGA demanded mass deportations and got them—only to discover that Stephen Miller’s raids didn’t inspire local teenagers to pick blueberries in 100-degree heat. With roughly 70% of farmworkers foreign-born, the labor force vanished. In New Jersey and California, fruit rotted in the fields; one grower alone lost $5 million simply because no one was left to harvest."
The financial backlash hasn't just struck farmers — it's now a political liability for the GOP.
"For Republicans running in 2026, this is a slow-motion catastrophe. They’re chained to an incumbent who is bankrupting his most loyal voters," Wilson explained.
"The tragedy isn’t that experts warned this would happen. It’s the people paying the price who built Trump’s pedestal. They voted for the trade war, ICE, and the chaos," Wilson wrote.
