Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) praised President Donald Trump's tariffs even as he admitted that farmers in his state had a "big harvest" with "no place to go."
During a Sunday interview on Meet the Press, host Kristen Welker told Thune that Trump had recently stated he would assist farmers hurt by the tariff policy.
"Why should American taxpayers bail out farmers who are hurting because of the president's tariff policies?" Welker wondered.
"Well, look, I think that the farmers, and I represent a lot of them, and they want nothing more than open markets," Thune replied. "There are markets right now that aren't open to some of our commodities."
"As a consequence of that, we've got a big harvest coming in here in South Dakota, corn and soybeans, and no place to go with it," he continued. "So what the President has said is, I'm going to support and I'm going to help our farmers."
"We're looking at potential solutions to make sure that we can help support farmers until some of those markets come back."
Thune, however, said he supported Trump using tariffs to achieve "reciprocity with countries that have been taking advantage of us for a long time."
"I think a lot of our farmers support that," the senator claimed. "But at the end of the day, our farmers are probably going to need some financial assistance this year."
MSNBC analyst Tim Miller argued that American taxpayers would be on the hook for Trump's refusal to roll back tariffs.
"Working Americans have to pay an extra sales tax on goods at Wal-Mart and then have that tax revenue used to bail out the farmers?" Miller wrote on X. "If Fox covered this like they did the bank bailouts this policy would have 15% approval."
