During Donald Trump’s recent trip to China, Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas appeared on Newsmax and toed a sycophantic line in a rather specific way.
“We trust in Trump that he’s over there making a great deal for us,” the senator said. “No one’s done more for American agriculture and rural America than President Trump, [Agriculture] Secretary [Brooke] Rollins and a Republican-only Congress.”
The president did not, in fact, make a “great deal” for anyone during his China trip, but Marshall nevertheless appeared at a press conference days later and again argued that the Trump administration “has done more for rural America than any administration has ever done.”
The Kansas senator didn’t point to any specific examples of the Republican administration actually delivering worthwhile results for rural America, and there was no great mystery as to why. As MS NOW host Catherine Rampell, pointing to tariffs, deportations and food aid cuts, explained soon after, “I think few people in American history have done more to screw over farmers than Donald Trump has in a very compressed period of time.”
With this in mind, the president is scheduled to wrap up his week at a roundtable on American agriculture in Wisconsin, though I don’t envy his speechwriters. Marc Short explained in a Washington Post op-ed this week that Trump’s policies “have punched farmers in the mouth.” From the piece:
Last year, America’s crop farmers lost $34.6 billion, and farm bankruptcies surged to numbers not seen since 2020, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. This year, 70 percent of farmers surveyed claim they cannot afford all the fertilizers they need. Fuel costs continue to rise as the Iran conflict remains unresolved and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed.
Ninety-four percent of farmers reported that their financial situation has “worsened or remained the same” since last year. Fifteen thousand farms closed in 2025 alone. The New York Times chronicles the closing of American family farms: Bankruptcies were up 55 percent in 2024, 46 percent in 2025 and 70 percent by May of this year.
Part of what made this notable is the author: In Trump’s first term, Short served as Trump’s White House director of legislative affairs, followed by a stint as then-Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff. Short is now the chairman of a group called Advancing American Freedom, Pence’s advocacy group.
Now, he’s trashing his former boss in unambiguous terms.
But as notable as it is to see Team Pence take aim at the Trump White House and its failures, it’s even more important to emphasize that Short’s indictment of the administration’s agenda is entirely correct: Many Americans have suffered as a result of the president’s agenda, but near the top of the list are farmers, many of whom voted for the Republican ticket in 2024, only to be rewarded with nothing but regressive policies that undermined the entire agricultural sector.