This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

Thanks to President Trump's policies, a confluence of events is about to unfold that will absolutely clobber rural America.

First, there's Trump's trade war. On Tuesday, Trump unleashed a bizarre rambling

rant that indicated he's absolutely fine with letting it drag on forever, our exporters be damned.

Meanwhile, there are new indications that farmers in Trump country are already getting hammered

by these tariffs. On top of that, the House GOP's planned cuts to

Medicaid are very likely to be a massive problem for rural hospitals, and big GOP cuts to food stamps

will also inflict pain on rural areas. So is there an opening here for Democrats to win back

some ground in these places? Today we're talking about all this with

Matt Hildreth, executive director of Rural Organizing.org and a veteran Democratic operative in rural

areas. Matt, great to have you on. Thank you for having me on the show. I'm a big fan.

Thanks, Matt. Let's start with what Trump said on Tuesday. He was talking about how he hasn't yet made any deals with other countries to dial down tariffs. Listen to this.

Just to finish, we also have a situation because everyone says, when, when are you going to sign deals? We don't have to sign deals. We can sign 25 deals right now, Howard, if we want it. We don't have to sign deals.

They have to sign deals with us.

They want a piece of our market.

We don't want a piece of their market.

We don't care about their market.

They want a piece of our market.

We're going to sit down and we're going to put very fair numbers down

and we're going to say, here's what this country, what we want, and congratulations, we have a deal.

And they're either say, great, and they'll start shopping, or they'll say, not good, we're not

...