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

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

President Donald Trump unleashed a strange truth social rant on Wednesday, declaring straight out that farmers are getting hurt because China is not buying soybeans.

Of course, Trump's own trade wars are the reason for this,

so in effect he admitted that his own policies are badly screwing one of his core constituencies.

That's amusing, but it also comes as some brutal economic news landed,

suggesting job losses could be about to get worse. The bigger story here is that the

bad economic news is piling up at exactly the moment we're entering a bruising government shutdown

fight, and of course a shutdown will make the economy even worse. So does that mean Trump and

Republicans will be in a weak enough position for Democrats to hold the line in the shutdown battle?

We're talking about all this with New Republic Senior Editor Alex Shepard, who has a good new piece arguing that Democrats are finally finding some spine in this fight.

Alex, good to see you, man.

It's great to be back.

So let's start with Trump's post on Truth Social. Here's what he said. Quote,

The soybean farmers of our country are being hurt because China is for negotiating reasons only not buying.

We've made so much money on tariffs that we are going to take a small portion of that money and help our farmers.

Close quote. Alex, note how Trump says China isn't

buying soybeans for negotiating reasons, but leaves out how we got to this point, which is Trump's

trade wars. Your thoughts on that? Yeah, I mean, it's also funny that he puts negotiating in

inverted comments as if there's some other possible meaning for that word.

But I mean, this shouldn't have come as a shock at all.

I think one of the things that I found most surprising about this is I was looking at a piece

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