The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 22 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Editor’s note: After we recorded, the AP posted a piece reporting that cattle ranchers are also opposed to Trump’s plan. “I love ‘America First’ rhetoric,” one said. “But to me this feels a lot like the failed policies of the past—the free trade sourcing cheap global goods.”

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

Not long after President Trump announced the $20 billion financial bailout idea for Argentina, he floated the proposal of purchasing beef from Argentina to bring prices down here in the United States. This enraged American beef producers. It also produced a backlash from farm-state Republicans.

But to our mind, the most interesting response came from a Wyoming farm, which posted a long lament on Twitter professing love for Trump, but urging him to change course, and warning of a deep betrayal. Is Trump finally screwing over his own supporters so badly that they’re actually getting angry about it? And what does that mean for this political moment? We’re talking about all this with Matt Hildreth, a democratic operative who runs ruralorganizing.org and whose own family has been in farming for generations, including in cattle farming. Good to have you on, Matt.

Matt Hildreth: Thanks for having me. I always like to be here with you.

Sargent: So, beef prices are running high—ground beef is up 15 percent this year. Trump is clearly worried about this. So he said the following to reporters on Air Force One this week: “We would buy some beef from Argentina. If we do that, that would bring our beef prices down.”

Matt, this has caused a huge eruption. GOP senators were blindsided—they were angry that he’s looking to deal with one of the main competitors of U.S. beef farmers. Can you explain the basic situation here?

Hildreth: For the last couple of years, there’s been a lot of uncertainty in the agriculture markets. And I think a lot of people knew that Trump was going to go after China with the soybeans. A lot of people anticipated the tariffs on China, and they anticipated that there was going to be some instability in the market and that China would retaliate.

So a lot of folks who would grow soybeans invested in more corn; they put their investments in beef. Farmers are really smart, and they know how to anticipate challenges. And so they diversify, just like anybody would diversify their investments. And so a lot of people stepped back a little bit from the beans and said, We might not be able to sell as many soybeans to China in the next coming years, because Trump’s been talking about that forever. So we’re going to put our money into beef and into corn.

And that turned out to be a pretty smart move for a number of farmers, because there’s been a few things that have happened. There are some infectious diseases and stuff that have happened in the South, and so there’s just been a limit on beef production in the last year or so—and that’s driven up the price of beef. So the farmers who may have been losing money on soybeans were going to make that up on beef.

And so they felt like they had enough heads-up on what was happening in the markets to make that move. And now you have Donald Trump, who’s just kind of off the cuff—or seemingly off the cuff—talking about importing beef from Argentina. And that would put American farmers in direct competition with the beef coming up from South America. And that’s going to bring down the price of beef.

Now, the reason why that causes so many problems is because, especially for the farmers who raise cattle—these are people who are ranchers—they don’t actually make a lot of money most years. Most years, people who do cattle lose money, or they just barely break even. But every once in a while, you have a year that’s going to pay all of your bills, pay all of your debts. And that was going to be this year.

This is the first really good, positive thing in the market for farmers. Now, for consumers, it’s a problem—but for farmers, they were going to be making back their money this year. So when Trump is throwing this uncertainty out of nowhere into the markets, it’s absolutely hitting farmers when they’re already down—they’re already kind of uncertain about where things are going. And it’s really pulling out the rug from under them on that last lifeline they had, which was the beef prices that were supporting them.

Sargent: Well, Merriweather Farms, which is in Wyoming, posted a striking lament on Twitter. “Dear President Trump,” it said. “We love you and support you, but your suggestion to buy beef from Argentina to stabilize beef prices would be an absolute betrayal to the American cattle rancher.”

The statement went on to say something really cutting as well, Matt. It said, “Helping people abroad before solving problems here puts America last.” That’s going to sting because it’s a direct repudiation of MAGA, Make America Great Again. And I think they intended to get into Trump’s head that way. By the way, this statement’s gotten a lot of press play. So I would........

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