In a visit to farm country, Trump extols ‘beautiful fountains’ back in Washington

By Jeff Zeleny, CNN

Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin (CNN) — As President Donald Trump took his seat Friday for a roundtable conversation on agriculture, speaking beneath a green sign with a giant slogan, “Fighting for American Farmers,” he quickly moved on to other matters on his mind.

“We’re very proud of Washington,” Trump said. “We had 22 fountains that didn’t work – all of the fountains, not one fountain in Washington worked – and now they’re clean and beautiful.”

It’s about 1,025 miles from Custer Farms in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin to the White House. The relative silence of the audience seemed to suggest that his supporters may not have shared the same enthusiasm over his projects, or at least the priority that he has placed upon them.

He held up images of the reflecting pool and other projects he’s been shepherding around the nation’s capital. Yet the piece of paper was so small, it could barely be seen in the crowd. He seemed to notice, so he said with a smile: “I’m too cheap to put up a projector.”

For Trump, it was a rare return to the campaign trail – his first visit back to Wisconsin since winning the state in 2024. And he was stepping into one of the biggest battlegrounds of the midterm elections, where Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden is locked in one of the most competitive races in the country in the GOP’s effort to hold the House majority.

There was little doubt Trump’s supporters were happy to see him again – they waited for hours, as a baking sun turned into a driving rainstorm – but it was less clear how eager Trump was to be there.

“I don’t need this,” Trump said with a laugh. “I got elected.”

He juxtaposed the burdens of his life to those facing farmers, saying they have it far easier than the leader of the free world.

“Your life is much better than my life,” Trump said. “You have a nice, safe beautiful life.”

It was hardly an I-feel-your-pain-moment — nor did it display the kind of empathy that many presidents try to express as they acknowledge economic hardships facing the American people.

The president’s trade policies – and tariff whiplash – have created deep economic unease across the nation’s farm belt. Soaring diesel and fertilizer prices, attributed to the Iran war, have added another layer of political concern for Republicans seeking reelection and trying to stay in power.

“We’ll take care of fertilizer,” Trump said, insisting that rising costs from the Iran war would only be temporary. He teased the possibility of sending more government aid to farmers, a proposition which was met with silence in the room.

“What happened here is artificial with the energy and the fertilizer,” he said, “so we’re looking at something.”

One of the loudest bursts of applause from hundreds of people in the audience came when Trump relayed a story about how a farmer once told him that fair trade was far more important than government subsidies. The room fell silent when he noted that farmers still take the aid.

“We’d rather have fair trade than the subsidies,” Brad Peterson, a farm owner and of the roundtable participants, later said.

Van Orden, who represents this swath of western Wisconsin’s dairy country and serves on the House Agriculture Committee, acknowledged the economic pain facing farmers. He urged patience, but fiercely defended the president’s policies.

“If anybody – anybody – you hear says that Donald Trump and this administration doesn’t care about the farmers,” Van Orden said, “you can look them straight in the eye and tell them that’s a pile of manure.”

Democratic congressional candidate Rebecca Cooke, who is the party’s preferred candidate to challenge Van Orden, grew up on a farm a few miles away from the one Trump visited. She said the voters of western Wisconsin “feel betrayed by him.”

“He’s sort of coming into the lion’s den,” Cooke told CNN. “Farmers just want stable marketplaces to be able to feed the world, they’re not looking for government handouts.”

She added: “I feel like it’s sort of a slap in the face to come here to talk about all the things that these coastal elites have passed that have actually been really a detriment to family farmers.”

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CNN’s Kit Maher contributed to this report.