Good, good morning.
Welcome, welcome to Matt and air on air.
Jane, Matt and air Greg Buck, Calvin, but enough coming to you live from our studio at Radio Park in Racine.
You can always join us.
You can call you can text.
The number is the same 8557524842.
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leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream on Facebook, YouTube and what used to be Twitter.
It is Wednesday, February 26th.
As of today, the average price of a gallon of milk in Wisconsin, $3 and 17 cents the same as yesterday and the average price of a dozen large eggs here in the state.
6 11 also the same since yesterday, but still up 45 cents from last week.
That was interesting.
Ooh.
Are we spies?
I clicked
the wrong button.
I like the spy music.
We're gonna have to work that in somewhere.
We have a very busy show coming up for you today.
And if you are able, I highly encourage you to stick around.
After the 1030 News, Will Westmoreland is gonna be joining us.
He has a channel on YouTube called The Back 40.
He is a farmer in southwestern Missouri.
He's been involved in politics for a long time.
He is a Democrat, but he's a farmer.
And he has some interesting perspectives on information, shall we say, in rural areas.
And the information that a lot of rural areas have been getting for decades, it's gonna be a very interesting conversation.
I hope you can join us for that, Will Westmoreland, and check him out on YouTube as well.
The Back 40, one of our favorite guests, Mr. Global Matt Randolph, beat us to it.
I got a bone to
pick with old Matty Randy.
Matty Randy, Matt Randolph, by the way, Mr. Global will be joining us next month.
But yes, Will Westmoreland after the 1030 news, after the 11 o'clock news, Beckham Munich, who is the executive director for the Great Lakes region for the National Wildlife Federation, will be joining us.
A number of Donald Trump's executive orders and other things are going to be impacting Wisconsin, and especially our concerns about conservation in the state.
We've said this before, we have a very, very deep love for our conservation, for our nature, for our beautiful landscapes here in Wisconsin, and that crosses all political divides.
Absolutely.
People on both sides of the aisle, love our state, love our natural resources, Beckham, Munich, gonna be joining us after 11 o'clock to talk about the potential ramifications of the second Trump administration on Wisconsin's natural resources.
11.33 as we do.
Mm-hmm we lighten things up a little bit just to take a breath Cleansing breath 1130 we want to talk about what is the latest thing you have learned from YouTube University?
We haven't done this for a while.
Yes, and last time we talked about it There's you can learn just about anything.
Mm-hmm
I'm going to be looking into nuclear fission, I think, after the show.
I was just looking at yard repair.
You got
higher.
You got loftier goals than I, friend.
But we want to know what is the latest thing you have learned from YouTube?
You.
My husband was referencing it.
Yeah,
we're having some plumbing problems.
We'll talk about that a little bit after 1130.
And we will wrap up the show as we always do with this shouldn't be a thing.
Today it is the rip me off baby one more time edition.
I hope you can stay tuned for that.
Wanted to start off, though, with this from the Milwaukee Journal, Sentinel Mollye Beck, top Republican Robin Voss weighs in on tax cuts being tight with Trump and inseminated people.
We didn't talk about this yesterday.
It's been floating around out there.
So I do think it's important that we address this because the rights jumping all over this and turning into something it is not.
What Jane what I know are
you telling me that a boring piece of legislation is being misinterpreted and then and thus Disseminated by all of the righty-tighty pundits.
That is what I'm saying.
I know you're shocked for the first time ever
Governor Evers facing criticism from Republicans and some Democrats over a proposal in his two-year state budget that changes language in state law
related to same-sex couples and having a baby through IVF, sperm donors, or a surrogate.
So, Governor Evers' proposal swaps out husband and wife for spouse, and then he proposes replacing woman, mother, and wife with a version of inseminated person, person who is inseminated.
Of course, Robin Voss in the right there, all jumping on this.
This is this is crazy this there's no court case out there.
There's no issue.
This was trying to solve This wasn't probably someone who came and lobbied and said wow if we don't fix this IVF problem We just discovered all of a sudden we're gonna have a problem boss says this is what they came up with for as an explanation for something that is stupid Okay, let's look at this the reason governor evers is doing this is to give protections to same-sex couples who have children through IVF
Yeah.
That's all this is doing.
Yeah.
And I find it beyond hilarious that the Republicans are saying, this is a law in search of a problem.
Could heavens, that's been their entire agenda the last decade.
Um, voter ID.
I don't have to say anymore.
I'm done.
That you want to talk about, you want to talk about a solution looking for a problem.
Right there.
Yes.
Voter ID, one of the biggest shams in this history of the state in modern times.
So don't come here looking at us saying we're... No, it's just, it's cleaning up language that because... It's to clarify.
It's to clarify.
I have friends who are lesbians.
I have family who are lesbians who have wives and one carried the children, the other didn't.
By law...
One of them is technically the mother by law, but by saying by inseminated person, they're referring to maybe my cousin who carried the babies versus her wife who did not.
And also just, they care about women all of a sudden.
They care about women.
We care about women.
They love women so much except when it comes to our reproductive health and stuff like
that.
Or anything giving you the right to think anything.
Governor Evers defending the provisions when he stopped in Warsaw on Monday saying it's meant to provide legal clarity.
Yes.
For saying seps couples in the process of growing their family either through sperm donor, surrogates, or IVF, quote,
What we want is legal certainty that moms are able to get the care they need.
That's it.
End of story.
So please, if you hear this at your local coffee shop, now you know why this is being done.
This is being Governor Evers wants to codify this to protect same sex couples who want to expand their families.
That's what this is for.
It's not about disappearing women.
It's not about getting rid of genders.
We're gonna turn everyone triads.
Yes, that's not what it's about
if you are By all admittance Jane and I both when we first heard this we had a kind of a huh?
What's this doesn't this okay?
There was a there was a non-understanding about it if you have friends in that coffee shop who truly believe who truly like Support the rights of family support the rights of women
bodily attack, all the good things, have this conversation with them.
Pass along the information.
People on the right who are going to say, well, no, they're seeing in 70 people because they want to disappear women.
No.
Shrug your shoulders.
That's a squirrel.
We need to keep our eyes focused on the important things, but inform your friends who are on the side of right or on the side of protection,
protection, protecting.
Yeah.
It's a protective measure.
And again, if we want to look at administration that is not.
same-sex couple friendly, look at the White House.
I think there are good reasons why Governor Evers wants to put this protection in place in advance of anything coming from the White House that is going to hurt this population.
I mean, disappearing in a whole group of people from their website, specifically trans people.
I mean, what?
What are we doing?
That's disgusting.
That's shameful.
Governor, Robin Voss, by the way,
is now tight with Trump.
Again?
Donald Trump once helped fund a challenge against Robin Voss after the 2020 election.
Yeah.
Because Robin Voss refused to try and overturn Trump's loss.
Yes, he lost Baron Square.
But now Robin says the two are tight.
Quote, I'm a team player.
The president is the president.
I'm sure you were that way with Biden too.
Yeah, of course.
The president is the president.
It is good for Wisconsin to have Republicans who have relationships with him.
I don't disagree because if we want help for Wisconsinites when something goes bad, you have to be able to suck up to Trump or you're not going to get anything.
I want to make sure that the good things that he is doing have a direct benefit for the people of Wisconsin.
And ultimately, I think we all benefit from that.
First of all, Robin, Robbie, popcorn king.
Name a good thing.
Name a good thing he's doing that Wisconsin benefit.
I'll wait.
I'll wait here because I don't see anything.
But also, we shouldn't let history, let us forget our history, that also because of the Trump world, they tried to recall him twice.
So now my question is, if Trump is cool with him, are all those individuals out in Southern Wisconsin who are running that campaign, is it?
Hands
off
hands has a retreat go back to go back to base camp.
We're all friends.
We're all
friends again It's fine
now that Trump is back in office all is good in the world.
Whoo, and just briefly yeah, because we're coming up against the break here We talked about how well some of the town halls went last week with some of our Republican lawmakers going out into public and I think it's fair to assume that most of them aren't gonna be doing any more of them because they certainly don't like pushback
But we do have an opportunity coming up thanks to Dr. Kristen Lierly who posted this on Twitter this morning.
The Republican Party of Brown County on March 8th at noon.
Brad Schimel and Tony Weed are gonna be there at the Townville Pub and Grill.
Oh boy.
We got a couple weeks folks.
Let's do some road trips.
A road trip?
A road trip
to
Swamco to offer our support for Brad Schimel, Mr. Commemorative Coin.
Let's not forget Brad Schimmel, when he was Wisconsin's attorney general, thought it wise to spend $10,000 of taxpayer money.
They're all about fiscal responsibility.
$10,000 for commemorative coins for Brad Schimmel's office that said kicking ass every day.
Are tax dollars at work?
So again, maybe consider March 8th.
It's a Saturday if you're not busy.
Nothing going on.
I think some spring training games, but other than that it's before saying be quiet be quiet March 8th at noon town line pub and grill Brad Schimmel Running against Susan Crawford on the state supreme court along with Tony weed who no one has seen since he was elected Let's make a road trip friends.
Shall we when we return?
Doge and transparency That's all on the way.
You're listening to Matt near on air.
This is the civic media radio network
There's a man who leads a life of
danger.
Good morning.
Welcome back to Matt and Aaron here.
Jane, Matt and Eric, Greg Bach and Kelv teeny on the board coming to you from our studio here at Radio Park in Racine where you can always join us.
Call her text at 855-752-4842.
Leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream on Facebook, YouTube, and what used to be Twitter.
By the way, Calvin, shout out to you from Ron from Hayward texting in listening on WHSM.
You always have great music.
You can credit CalTini for that.
CalTini is the one who picks the tunes and thank you for that Ron, really appreciate it.
As I mentioned, coming up after the 1030 News, Will Westmoreland is going to be joining us.
He's a farmer from southwestern Missouri and he has a channel on YouTube called The Back 40, which I highly encourage you to check out.
Should be a very interesting conversation.
with Will, and I forgot to mention right before the break as well that Judge Susan Crawford is going to be joining us tomorrow morning.
Yes, 11 o'clock.
11 o'clock, so stick around for that.
And again, if you can't listen live because you have a life, you can always listen to us as a podcast or go back to the website, civicmedia.us, click on shows.
go to Matt Nair on air and they are broken down into one hour blocks.
And we've got about a hundred previous episodes there.
So check it out at civicmedia.us.
Also, the Brewer's Spring training continues this week.
The crew taking on the Dodgers today at 2 p.m.
You can catch the game on several of our Civic Media Brewer's affiliates, including WRCE and Richland Center, WISS in Oshkosh, and WBZH in Hayward.
The crew and the Dodgers today
at 2pm.
Wanted to talk a little bit about Doge.
Doge.
Transparency number one.
Headline from the New York Times.
Doge quietly deletes the five biggest spending cuts it celebrated last week.
Whoopsie doodles.
The cuts highlighted on an earlier version of the wall of receipts.
Had mistakes vastly inflating the amount of money saved.
Yeah, what?
Yeah Five of their biggest spending cuts Doge was celebrating just last week on their page the wall of receipts Yeah, now they've just kind of deleted them because they they made mistakes with math Good to know at least they took them down.
I guess that's one good
thing
I mean, no, because they need to be held accountable.
Do they?
Yes, they
do.
Well, we just found out yesterday who's actually running Doge.
It's Elon Musk, correct?
No, it's not.
It's Elon Musk's mom?
Could be.
No, it's not.
Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt held a press conference yesterday where she was asked about who is the head of Doge.
Calvin, can we play that clip please from Ms.
Levitt?
Who tell us who the administrator of DOGE is?
Again, I've been asked and answered this question.
Elon Musk is overseeing DOGE.
No, Elon Musk is a special government employee, which I've also been asked and have answered that question as well.
There are
career officials at Doge.
There are political appointees at Doge.
I'm not going to reveal the name of that individual from this podium.
I'm happy to follow up and provide that to you.
But we've been incredibly transparent about the way that Doge is working.
What?
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
You've been incredibly transparent about how Doge is working, but I'm not going to give you the name of the person who's administrating Doge.
And will you tell us about the website where you're clearing off information that was put there a couple days ago?
Can you answer those questions of transparency, please?
When I heard this yesterday, this is the first thing that came to mind.
Calvin, play that clip, please.
Delta's already on probation.
Then as of this moment, they're on double secret probation.
What is she on double secret probation?
We can't know who the person is who's running Doge.
I'm not going to tell you right now.
Is it some appointee?
Is it
Elon?
Is it the chainsaw?
No, it's Amy Gleason.
Amy Gleason.
Amy Gleason is the administrator of the Doge initiative, tasked with slashing trillions from the federal budget.
Gleason has been described as a top advisor to Elon Musk.
She's a former official at the U.S.
Digital Service.
That sounds like you made that up just now.
She served as a digital services expert.
Background includes experience in health care technology and product management, working as chief product officer for various health related companies.
But again, I go back to
We are the most transparent administration in history, but I'm not going to tell you.
No,
not publicly from this microphone in front of all these reporters.
You want to find out?
Meet me in the alley and back.
You wear a t-shirt that says I'm looking for the answers.
There
was.
Yeah,
good.
There were some follow up questions to her about do the people who are working at Doge know that this woman is in charge?
Well, I don't know.
You don't know.
Well.
Remember Scott Fitzgerald last week was town hall meeting.
He said, right.
He was, I haven't been briefed on Doge.
I know nothing about it.
But then he says, well, they'll be answering questions when we want them to answer it.
Sure they will.
Transparency abound here in Washington DC.
The swap is being empty folks.
You did it.
We did it.
We won.
I mean, this is, this, this goes back to what we've been talking about, Jane, where it's like this double standard.
Could you imagine a version of this story?
Exactly.
No.
Where the Democrats even attempt to do something like this.
Now Carolyn Levitt is obsessed snapping at reporters over who is heading Doge.
They're obsessed.
The press is obsessed.
Shouldn't we as taxpayers know who is heading this organization?
And by the way, Trump, Department of Justice lawyers who were appearing in court last week, also could not name
Who is the administrator of Doge?
What they considered obsessed, I would classify as worried, concerned, terrified, those things.
Not obsessed.
Like, oh my gosh, it was the head of Doge.
No.
It's called accountability.
It's called transparency.
Who is taking a hacksaw to our federal budget?
Who?
And making a lot of mistakes along the way, apparently.
But that's all good.
That's
fine.
Don't worry about it.
Double secret probation.
No, it's fine.
News is coming up next.
When we return, we're to talk to Will Westmoreland.
Check him out on YouTube.
He's got a channel called The Back 40.
Should be a very interesting discussion.
Stay close.
You are listening to Matt Nair on air.
This is the Civic Media Radio
Network.
The wrong word slips while kissing persuasive lips.
Hots are you won't live to see tomorrow go.
Secret agent man, secret agent man.
They've given you a number and take away your name.
Secret agent man, secret agent man.
you a number and take away your name.
Only got a number, secret agent five.
They've taken away your name.
Secret agent, secret agent.
Good morning.
Welcome.
Welcome to Matt Nair on air.
Jane Matt Nair, Greg Bach, Calvinator on the board coming to you from our studio here at Radio Park in Racine.
You can always join us.
Call her text.
The number is the same 855-752-4842.
You can leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream.
on Facebook, YouTube, and what used to be Twitter.
Our next guest, I stumbled over him on TikTok, and that's not a place where I normally go, but I saw your video and just thought it was such an important message and such an important perspective.
Will Westmoreland is joining us now.
He is a farmer in southwestern Missouri, and he has a channel on YouTube called The Back 40.
Good morning, Will.
Thank you so very much for joining us.
How you doing?
I'm doing great Jane and thanks for having me on absolutely looking forward to the conversation
me too I you were responding well in this tiktok that I saw to post by another young farmer who was really concerned about losing his farm because of some of the freezes that the Trump administration has put into place and You took the time to give him a very very long explanation
about how we got here.
And I do want to play just a real short clip from part of your discussion.
Calvin, can you play that clip from Will Westmoreland, please?
A
lot of younger people don't know that right wing talk radio and news, the pundits, the talking heads and right wing talk radio, et cetera, have been working for over 40 years to develop in rural people.
Exactly the kinds of ideas that you have in your head, that all politicians are crooks, that they're all the same, that you can't trust traditional media, that anything you hear that comes out of Washington DC or New York or the New York Times or CBS News, that it's all a lie.
I thought that was so important, Will, and you're one of the first people I have come across who has mentioned
getting rid of the fairness doctrine which happened under Ronald Reagan in the Reagan administration.
I was new to broadcasting at that time.
I started in 1981 but I came to Milwaukee in 1984 and it was shortly after that that the fairness doctrine was repealed.
For folks who may not understand what that is, could you explain it please?
Right, so the fairness doctrine, if you were using the public airwaves back in the day, as the kids say, you had an obligation to share both sides of the story.
So if you were using the public airwaves on a radio broadcast or on a television broadcast, and you were presenting one side of an issue, you were under an obligation to present the other side as well.
And there was a calculated movement during the Reagan years to eliminate the fairness doctrine because they had already set the table for conservative news media in this country.
So when the fairness doctrine was eliminated, they were standing there at the starting gate with multiple very conservative talk radio programs, Fox News, et cetera, that just came sprinting out of the gate.
And over the years, if I could just add on to that, over the years, you know, I went from when I was a kid sitting in the farm, you know, living room at the farm listening to Walter Cronkite and all the great reporters out there to by the time I was in my 20s.
you'd go to a farm where they were milking cows or you'd go to a job site where they were working and there was one radio out in the middle of everything just playing Rush Limbaugh and you know a whole series of right wing talk radio for an entire day and that change was a big change that we don't talk about anymore.
And I think as you mentioned in your longer response to this young farmer that has led to where we are today in so many instances.
Many people who live in urban areas look at people in rural areas and say, or think, why are you voting against your own interests?
Why are you voting for people who are putting forth policies that will harm you?
And that is largely because they're not hearing any of the other side.
That's true.
They're not hearing the other side, but I always ask people to kind of look at it in a different light.
It's not that they view themselves as voting against their best interest.
What's happened in right wing media ecospheres that they've convinced them that fighting for culture wars is in their best interest.
So whenever they forward these culture wars and they vote on culture war issues, rather than voting on economic issues, et cetera, they don't view that as voting against their best interest.
They view that as
Voting in their best interest by supporting these culture wars that they're fighting for you know politicians and tele evangelists and all these other people but not for themselves
Well, and they think if I fight for these culture wars if I fight for these specific things and people Well, then they're gonna help us out and we're going to reap all the rewards all the benefits and you know I listen to another person talk about you know if they come from a a more devout church background too they think well
the glory that's in heaven will be here on earth because we're fighting for these individuals who believe in us and what we think.
And so it's almost like a double layer as well, which I don't want to get into a religious topic, but it was an interesting comparison too that, you know, that's who the, if they're
going to fight
for it, it's going to benefit them.
They're going to reap what they
sow.
And Jane and Greg, it's all tied together.
I mean, I almost think that you could have a three day show like an old Jerry Lewis telephone and talk about all this stuff and never quit.
But it is tied together.
Like we know for a fact now in polling that 48% of people that call themselves evangelical Christians, they don't call themselves that for religious reasons.
They call themselves that because they feel like it's a box they need to check off as a conservative Republican or a supporter of Donald Trump.
That's a huge percentage.
Think about that.
That's almost half of the people that identify as evangelical Christians out there.
And a lot of people also forget, Jane, I'm a little gray around the edges.
You know, just to give one example, the Southern Baptist Convention, I was a Baptist for a while.
I'm a proud Episcopalian now because of their beliefs and openness.
but the Southern Baptist Convention used to have a statement in their platform of beliefs that said if a woman wanted to receive an abortion due to harm that could be caused her if she carried out her pregnancy, or, and I'm using their verbiage, there was a chance that the child might be deformed, she could have that abortion.
It was right in the bylaws of the Southern Baptist Convention.
It wasn't until the Jerry Falwells and the Pat Robertsons of the world came along and decided,
abortion would be a really good issue for us to politicize and turn, you know, farm farmers and ranchers and the rural United States against the Democrats.
It wasn't until then that this became a big issue across the country.
That's so important, Will.
And I think a lot of folks are really unaware of that.
You're absolutely right.
Abortion.
was not a big issue among the vast majority of Christian communities.
It was a personal decision.
That's your private personal decision between you and your doctor and your God.
And at one point, the Republicans realized they were losing the culture wars, and they needed a flashpoint.
And this is what they grasped onto.
They got it.
And they got it.
Yeah, absolutely.
How do we combat this, Will?
It's 2025.
How do we go about getting accurate information out into this wasteland now?
Yeah, I think there are a couple of things.
It's going to require a little bit of intellectual exercise on our part.
I don't think we're going to turn the tide by...
by continuing to fight on that ground.
You're just not going to be able to convince somebody to change their views on culture war overnight.
I think we've got a unique opportunity, though, to use these economic issues that are going to come about because of all these cuts to really emphasize the fact that we've got to get back to voting for our best interest in regard to policy.
And when I think I was so excited to come on because of
the fact that Wisconsin is such a great agricultural state.
I mean, you guys have almost 60,000 farmers in your state.
I think you're farming somewhere over almost 14 million acres, and your dairy industry is like the pride of the world.
Wisconsin is not only a great farming state, but it's the intellectual hub for ag around the world.
There are only a few states that fulfill that role, and Wisconsin is one of them.
For instance, you guys lead the world in dairy genetics.
You're sending genetics all over the world from Wisconsin to make herds stronger, more disease resistant, et cetera.
The other thing that you do, I think it's out of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is you've got a nonprofit credit organization there.
that works to help do research and do financial shoring for groups all over the world, including farmers in Ukraine.
And these cuts are gonna have a really, really, really big impact in Wisconsin to the point where you could see as much as 33% of your dairy industry go away.
You've already seen the funding from USID, AID that supports all these things I just talked about, it's gone.
And these people are being laid off.
I think this is going to be a really good time for us to not rub it in their face.
And I made that point in my video.
You know, don't say you screwed up.
You voted for him.
It's your fault.
Let's show them what this is going to mean for farming in this country and use that as an opportunity to change their
mind.
Well, I'm glad you brought that up.
That was one of the big, big points
of
when I watched your video for me is that it's very easy to put your head down, kick the dirt and dirt and say, well, to heck with those people, they get what they deserve.
But you can't do that.
It doesn't help anybody.
And I think, you know, when we're talking about what do we do to get the information out there?
I think another thing we have to do is take a look at ourselves and say, all right, we're going to talk to people possibly who vehemently disagree with us.
And we want to say, well, you get what you voted for, but we can't do that.
We have to be stronger and know that if we're having these conversations, we're doing this together and we'll win together, especially when we talk a lot about farmers on this show.
When it comes to the farmers, we're very, very protective of them because
We see all the things that happen to them from this, from Madison, the state house.
to the Congress and how they're just kind of always left behind.
It
just feels like our farmers get kicked by both sides.
You know, everybody claims how much we love our farmers like they say about veterans and then when it comes to actually doing something on their benefit, that never seems to materialize.
If you're just joining us, Will Westmoreland is our guest.
He has a YouTube channel called the Back 40.
I highly encourage you to check it out.
Will has a really great video where he is responding to another young farmer.
who is concerned about losing his farm because of the aid money that has been frozen under the Trump administration.
And you were so gracious in your video, Will, you said too, you said, I'm not an FAFO kind of guy.
I'm not going to come back to you and say, suck it up.
This is what you voted for.
Because as Greg said, that isn't doing any of us any good.
Did you hear back from that young man?
I did.
We've had a lot of discussion since then.
And listen, guys, I gotta be honest.
I don't want anybody to put my face on Mount Rushmore, okay?
My first reaction was the same as everybody else's, okay?
I mean, I just have to be honest about that, you know?
But not not it wasn't vehement.
It was just more like a grin on my face and I'm thinking well You know my grandpa used to say if you sleep with dogs you're gonna get fleas and that was my first thought but then I saw the comments that were coming in and I thought this would be an opportunity to talk to this person and we have talked and So matter of fact just last week the the ag department released about 1%
of the funds that are out there, just $20 million out of billions of dollars.
And I thought it was kind of interesting, Jane and Greg, you'll get a kick out of this, that a lot of the farmers that were the loudest on TikTok got their money last week, including Skyler.
No kidding.
And I'm glad he got it.
I've talked to him.
He's a hardworking kid.
He's doing something that a lot of farmers don't do.
He's paying for his land and starting his farming practice without inheriting anything from his parents.
Wow.
And
that's really hard to do.
So I have a lot of respect for him, but it's a work in progress.
I mean, you can't expect somebody that holds these beliefs to change overnight, but I'll tell you this, we had a program one night on, we do TikTok lives and if they were about 16,000 people that came through there and he said on that live, he thought Donald Trump should be impeached.
And I'm like, what more could you ask for?
That's huge.
That's
huge.
I'm glad that he followed up.
And also just the idea, we hear about farmers who are running a fourth, fifth generation farm, especially here in Wisconsin, but someone who just decides, I'm going to become a farmer in 2025, that is...
I can't even imagine.
Cannot even imagine.
It does.
And listen, I'm hearing from these folks all the time.
I get hundreds of messages a week.
There's a whole subgenre on social media if you type in Farmer Mia Culpa.
You can see a whole subgenre of farmers saying, I made a mistake.
I shouldn't have voted for Donald Trump.
This is bad for farming.
And then you add on top of that, I know we're short on time, so I'm just gonna mention the bullet points.
You add on top of that, the university cuts.
We cut the program that researchers bird flew and we just learned in the last three days that's jumping to cattle, which is gonna decimate the dairy industry if we don't get on top of it.
We've got cuts to snap and wick and food stamps.
It's just a cross.
the board their assaulting farm.
We're going to continue our conversation with Will Westmoreland to check him out on YouTube.
His channel is called The Back 40.
If you have a question, text it in please at 855-752-4842.
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Good morning.
Welcome back to Matt and air on air Jane Matt and air Greg Bach doctor slide on the board coming to you from our studio here at Radio Park in Racine You can always join a scholar texts.
The number is the same 8 5 5 7 5 2 4 8 4 2 Leave a comment if you're watching on the live stream on Facebook YouTube and what used to be Twitter?
Delighted to be joined by our guest.
He has a channel on YouTube called the back 40 Will Westmoreland
is a farmer in southwestern Missouri.
He's got a great, he's on TikTok, you're all over the place.
Well, and I applaud you for that, for getting involved in social media to the extent that you have.
And we're just talking about farmers and the Trump administration and challenges going forward.
We have a whole bunch of texts and everything coming in for you, Will.
Kimber from Muskaday says, thank you so much for bringing Will's voice to Wisconsin.
being in the third congressional district with, you know who, that she's referencing Derek Van Orden, representing us.
I'm especially grateful.
I am spreading the word of will in the back 40 to my Democratic neighbors, because many of those farmers meet on the regular over early morning coffee with local Republican farmers.
And you
have
mentioned that in your own social media that you know lots of Republican farmers.
Well, I mean, this is an 80-20 Republican area down here.
You can't throw a rock without hitting a Republican.
And I grew up with these guys.
I graduated from a little rural school in Bolivar, Missouri, and I still know all the guys I graduated with.
And I lived around the country.
I was fortunate to live in different parts of the country, but moved back here where I was born and raised.
You know, it's different when you're looking somebody face to face.
It's easy to be mean on social media.
But when you're sitting there eating breakfast with somebody or eating lunch, you tend to talk through these issues a little more, you know, than you do when you're just battling it out on social media.
So, you know, I hear even some of my friends now that are, you know, they're, they're, it's hard to just say I was wrong.
So I always ask people, I do this on social media and I do it in person.
I say, don't admit you were wrong, just admit you were lied to.
That's a lot easier to do.
If you just admit you were lied to, you can get over here with us and start working to fight the problem.
That is so important, Will.
And this goes back to the whole thing of, yeah, you get what you deserve because you voted for this.
That's not going to fix anything.
There's no benefit to acting morally superior in this instance.
It's just not helpful to anyone.
And I thought your whole point about, I'm not asking you to tell me you were wrong.
I'm not asking you to tell me that you made a mistake.
I just want you to admit that you got lied to.
Yeah, and here's the thing.
I don't want anybody to misread what I'm saying there.
We've got to continue to fight as hard as we can against the policies of this administration, especially when it comes to marginalized people in this country.
Nobody's sitting on their laurels waiting for everybody else to come along.
All I'm saying is is that when somebody tells you, I think I made a mistake or I was lied to,
This is bad for farming and ranching.
It's bad for rural America, for our schools here, for our hospitals, all the other things these cuts impact.
When they come to you and say, I want to help you work to stop that, you've got to give them just that much grace, just a little bit of grace to say, join the team and help us.
We could keep you for an hour.
We're going to have to have you back
because
we have all kinds of comments coming in that we're just not going to have time to get around to.
You mentioned something really important in your response to that young farmer about the goal of, the goal is to corporatize all of America's farming, ultimately, correct?
I think so, whether it's a stated goal or whether it's a byproduct of the policies that are happening, over the last 10 years, every year, we have a bigger and bigger increase in the number of farms and ranches that are being bought up by Wall Street and large investment firms, which I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that our vice president, JD Vance, is a funder
of.
He raised money for
one of the.
Yeah, acre trader and some others.
It was a large fund that funded many of these types of things.
But yes, I think the byproduct of that is that when these farms go out of business or these farm families, when somebody decides they don't want to carry on the family farm, they get a lot of money for those farms.
I'll give you one quick example, Jane.
In Oklahoma, they were selling 187 acres.
really good for row crops.
And they had several farmers that showed up thinking I could buy this for a million bucks or so.
And then a Wall Street company came in and paid over $5 million for that same land.
No way a farmer could compete with that.
And now it's in the Wall Street system and it'll never leave that system.
It'll be a corporate farm from now on with the people that used to own it or own farms around it working on those farms.
You need to folks who are unaware because I didn't know about this until about two weeks ago.
Look up acre trader.
Look up acre trader.
It's not it's not in our best interests.
There are a lot of them.
Yeah, a lot of acre traders.
It's not even the biggest one, Jane, but it's it's the most famous because advances ties to it.
Well, and I just remember Sunny Perdue, who was the Agriculture Secretary in the first Trump administration, saying, go big or go home.
He said it out
loud.
He said the big it was in wisconsin the international dairy symposium And he said the big get bigger and the small go out that that's their philosophy about farm
We had a comment on the live stream like looking to say well, it can't all be that bad They brought up the fact that corn is 479 per bushel right now, but honestly will
That's great if corn is forced every night in a bushel, but that doesn't solve anything for everybody.
Not everyone farms corn or they do other things.
And also those corn farmers might be suffering from other problems as well.
Well, the key to that sentence is right now.
You know, those are the magical words in that sentence.
The tariffs that we put on China this time, I know we're short on time, I'm going to make this quick.
They're in a much different position.
They don't have a disease in their hog industry, so they've got plenty of hogs.
They can not buy hogs from us.
They also have the highest number of row crop reserves they've ever had.
The National Corn Growers said that if China puts reciprocal tariffs on us,
We could not sell 80% of our corn crop over the next three years.
So right now is the key word there.
I wouldn't put my money on that.
Will Westmoreland has a channel on YouTube called the back 40.
Check it out.
We must have you back so we can
address.
I'll be here at the drop of the hat.
I love talking to some of the 97
people who have been texting us.
Thank you so very much.
We'll really appreciate it.
We will be in touch.
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It was mine.