Food Stamp Fraud Allegations, California’s Disappearing Farms, and the Threat to America’s Food Supply | Brooke Rollins & VDH

The challenge with our election system, where you run every two years, is that we don't have the benefit of thinking 20 years, 50 years, a hundred years in advance, like China does, and Russia and others do. We need so much more time than four years. Having said that, we are deconstructing a lot of this and putting a more market-oriented system in place. These big companies are smart, right? They know the farmers are about to get an infusion of cash, and they immediately increase their prices. We have to get off this hamster wheel we're on, or we won't have freedom in this country, because we're going to lose all of our farmers. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for our podcast, and Jack is not with me today, and Sam is not with me, because we're doing one of our interviews that we often do, and we're very delighted to have Secretary Brooke Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture in the Trump administration, but a pivotal player in his first term, and what I called his counter-revolution, or the wilderness years as well, when he was out of office. And we're going to be talking to her about a range of issues, especially here about California, but also this vast bureaucracy runs, and we'll be right back after this message. Many Americans are going to have a big wake up call. We have never seen net migration as high as it has been in the last few years. This year, there have been more people coming to the UK in small boats than ever before. You did an extreme thing to the country. Britain is facing a migrant-friar epidemic. We don't actually know where they're coming from, who they are, how old they are. Why would you let in millions of people who are indebted, if not to change the country from within? There is no other word for it. Demographic replacement. England's a blue thing for America. It's coming. It's just a blue thing. Thousands of daily migrant crossings. A political earthquake threatens to reshape America. We are showing there is a new path for politics in our country. No coaches on the site. You cannot ban Shadya. America is a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of immigrants. We're a nation of immigrants. The immigration crisis. Watch now on the Heritage Foundations YouTube channel. And we're back. Secretary, you have 100,000 employees plus and 29 agencies. I don't think anybody realizes you're in charge of everything from the US forest service to what we used to call foodstance or SNAP program. And there's food safety, food promotion, food policy. Is there any, when you came in there, it seemed like I don't want to put you on the spot, but it seemed to my view that all of those branches in the Department of Agriculture, as in a lot of the other branches of government had been, I don't know what the right word is war, but they had been turned from their original purposes to sort of social engineering. We sometimes we call DEI. So were you kind of surprised just how off-message these things, that these agencies and sub-departments had become? Yes. First, let me say what an honor it is to be on. I'm been a big Victor Davis Hanson fan for a really, really long time. And the America First movement is standing on handful of people's shoulders, but you are right there in the middle for a really long time. Before President Trump even came down that escalator, you've been a real hero. So thank you for the many, many years and it's an honor to be on. Thank you. Well, I will say that yes, we could have an hour's long conversation about the administrative state, about the usurpation of freedom of self-governance, of the founding father's vision being completely obliterated under the federal government, the federal bureaucracy. And as you mentioned, I was in the first term. It took, we got a lot done, especially when you consider all of the obstacles. When I walked out of the first term, I was in the West Wing. So it was very different. I worked with other cabinet members, but we were very obviously you're somewhat insulated in the West Wing. And the cabinet comes to you being a part of and running a, one of the largest federal agencies in the world, not just in America, has been really eye-opening for me. Number one, how to your point, how unbelievably far that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had strayed from Abraham Lincoln's vision in 1862 when he founded it as an agency, a representative of the people of America. The sixth, the sixth agency, the original four, of course, and you had interior in the mid 1800s and then you had USDA in 1862. And so the idea that the farmers and the ranchers which was most of America in 1862 had a group of people that were fighting for them in Washington. When I walked in the door, however many years later, day one, Victor, we canceled 900 DEI trainings, 900 DEI trainings. We gutted immediately a program that had been implemented under Biden, probably envisioned under Obama, that literally ranked farmer payment based on the color of skin. So if you were a white male farmer, you were at the back of the line. We talk about racism at its worst, is astounding. When you look at what USDA was funding in research, and you all heard a lot about this at the beginning of the term. You haven't heard as much lately because we're still doing it. It's just not as big news anymore. But we were funding USDA with taxpayer money, was funding research such as food justice for queer, bi-pock, and transgender farmers in San Francisco. Racial injustice in the pest control system. Transgender, the study of, forgive me, the study of the menstruation cycles of mice and how it relates to transgender Americans. This is the USDA. Meanwhile, the consolidation of the loss of the family farm has never been worse in these years, right? The consolidation where we're now relying on China for our seeds, Russia for our fertilizer, Brazil for our processing. So this is a 9-1-1 over here in agriculture, and we had a USDA that was more focused on DEI and transgender mice. So that's what I walked in to on day one. How many panelists? Just as for listeners, how many employees do you think were involved? I know that Doge says they cut 270,000 across, but did you have thousands of people under USDA that we're doing these things? Yes, we did. And this is one of the things we doesn't get talked about enough, but it's a, I think, one of the greatest legacies and defying all the odds, and that is the federal government is now back to the size it was 40, 50 years ago. USDA is an example. When we walked in the door, had about 105,000 employees. Today, we're right at about 85,000. So, you know, in the world did an end. Ry is not a perfect. There have been some of our offices we need to restaff, and we're working at warp speed, but keep in mind, you haven't heard any, you know, this farmer went out of business because USDA didn't get it done, or that food stamp didn't get deployed because USDA lost 20,000 or didn't have 20,000 employees. So we've, I think, really taken that vision at USDA so seriously, and completely reorganized and recalibrated. And now we're getting sued, of course, on many levels of all of these decisions, but we're now moving the headquarters of USDA out of Washington. So we're going into five key areas, Salt Lake City, Raleigh, Colorado Springs, Kansas City, Missouri, and Indianapolis, Indiana. And we're basically moving USDA closer to our constituents, which, of course, for the Uniparty has been a complete and total nuclear meltdown. I want to call, I want to call about that, that they should relocate. I think it was in 1970, first one I wrote, I would know it was 1983, and then I wrote a couple books about farming about doing that, but I never thought anybody would be able to do it. What's your budget now? Your total budget versus what it was, is it, were you able to not have any increases at all, or did you? Oh, yeah, no, we have been able to really, well, it's interesting. And this is what, as I'm out in the country, and that's been such an incredible blessing in this job, is to go back to my roots, where boots and jeans, ride horses, sit with farmers, get out of Washington, D.C., I don't really meet with a lobbyist, I don't really meet with the trade associations, although they have some good people involved. I literally, I have books of, there's a book right here in front of me, I have books of ideas from farmers, what we need to do. to help them. And we're implementing almost everything at this point when I get back ongoing. But the budget is over 200 billion, it's about 220 billion. The biggest driver is food stamps. And thanks to Congressional Republicans and of course our President Trump's leadership and our work, we are shrinking the food stamp program to ensure that those who need it actually get it. But for those, and well here's what's funny Victor on the food stamp side because this is agriculture but we do run that program and it is our biggest budget item. That the screaming from all the do-goaters on the left, oh you know you're taking food out of hungry people's mouths. And the way I respond to that is listen, all we have done is require, if you're going to get a food stamp, you're required to look for a job at 20 hours a week. You're required or required to volunteer 20 hours a week or required to work 20 hours a week. Like this is not a draconian we're kicking everyone off. We're just asking you to get off the sofa and go look for a job. And oh by the way, if you're disabled, have very young children or elderly, that doesn't even apply to you. So these changes alone and then you take into account we've moved, you know, all the illegal aliens off. We've had a lot of fraud which you've probably been tracking that we found. There's been a big part, but we've gone from 43 million people on food stamps when I walked in the door to about 38 million today. That's pretty amazing. So we have moved millions of people. So we've saved a lot of money there. So just so we've had these big frauds on the state level at in California and of course in Minnesota. Is that the way that you inherited the agency did it work with you gave the money and the state had to administer it? Are we able to administer it all the way to the recipient or did the state step in? Well, so here's how the SNAP program works. Unlike almost every other federal government program. Listen, as a 10th amendment girl, I love giving the states the flexibility to run their own programs, right? Like this is this is what the founders intended. However, it happened with SNAP because I had all these 15, 20 years of work at the state level. I'm one of the few people that worked in the West Wing and then is running a federal government agency that really understands state policy and how to move all of these programs and how to put guardrails on them. And that was from a very red state, Texas, where we took it very seriously. Other states like your California see it as more of an incentive to get more illegal aliens to get more voters to buy voters off. So you have two varying, very different approaches. But on SNAP, the way it was set up by Congress is it's a federal government program, but it's 100% state administered. And up until Trump's second term, no one had ever asked for real accountability on it. And so within the first hour, I was sworn in on February 13th by Justice Clarence Thomas, right up there with Victor Davis Hansen in my line, sort of a hero of epic proportions. And so I had Justice Thomas Sramian and then immediately drove over at 6 p.m. with my family to USDA. He said, the rules are, you can't really walk in your building until you're actually sworn in. So the teams had been there working, but I didn't even walk in that building till the evening of February 13th. And by 9 p.m., day one, night one, just a couple hours after being sworn in, I sent a letter to every governor in America saying it's a new day. Partner with us, but we got to figure out why this program is costing so much, why the fraud is running rampant, why we've gone from, you know, over a number of years under Joe Biden, especially why the program increased 40% in cost. And we've got to make sure the people that actually need these programs are getting them. And I had all the red governors and actually two Democrat governors say, yes, we want to be your partner. This is not political. I'm not trying to score political points. I'm not trying to win an election. Like I actually really want to do this with all of you. And then of course, the other blue governor sued us. So we're still in active litigation over what we asked them to do is give us their data. So we could help understand where all the fraud was coming from. And what we found, even from the red states, Victor was astounding, half a million people that were getting more than one benefit, more than one. So getting the same benefit more than once, I should say, sometimes five, six times across state lines. We found about 200,000 dead people or people using dead people, social security numbers. We found luxury vehicles. We found, you can't imagine what we found. And this was in the red states, which is sort of stunning because I came from a red state. We worked really hard on accountability. But until Elon Musk, until Doge, another interesting piece of this, once we finished with Doge, late spring of year one, last year, I pivoted the Doge team to this. I asked them all to stay and to help us figure this fraud out was snap and they've done that and it's been really incredible. Have you? What is the form of the pushback? You get democratic congressman Senate that call you up or is it the media or what? Where is the all coordinated? It's all coordinated. It is all of the above. And you know, it's interesting. The congressional hearings, which most people in my position, hate because you got to go and sit in front and let the Democrats just kind of hammer you. And then it gets kind of silly and then everyone all the left is looking for their viral moment. So you get really stupid stuff. I have actually come to enjoy those back and forths, even with the Democrats because it gives me the opportunity to have an exchange with them. And I don't yell and I don't bring up, you know, well, your husband, I mean, I don't do any of that. I don't go off off policy line. I just stay in the lane and I say, listen, so and so Democrat from Minnesota, you can't possibly look me in the eyes and say that the way Minnesota is running this program is okay. There's not maybe there's one out of a hundred Democrats that would actually agree that we should be funding some rappers luxury lifestyle. Last one was Shotty Dread. That's literally a name. Shotty Dread, we arrested a few weeks ago, who had, you know, 9,000 calls from his office to the snap line, luxury cars burning, literally burning money on his Instagram. These are the kind of people who are resting. No one in America, Republican, Democrat, black, Hispanic, white, no one thinks that this is how taxpayer dollars should be spent. So having that engaging with some of these Democrats has been fun. I enjoy going on CNN and having these debates. And it is hard for people to say, oh, no, Brooke, we really think that, you know, Shotty Dread should have nine portions and burn money on Instagram. Like, there's real problems in these programs and we're fixing them. Do you think I'm speaking from my farm in California? Because you're the California is the biggest state. And so it's obviously the biggest recipient in population, 41 million. You have is California and you're all of your executive actions. Is it a special case, especially with it because it's a one party state and it's kind of insane now and 300,000 people are leaving. Is that is that your biggest challenge statewide? There are a lot of these states for many for different reasons, right? I'm fighting Kathy Hocal in New York on solar panels going over prime farmland. I'm fighting the state of Washington right now on what they're doing with their ranchers and they're allowing these gray wolves, which shouldn't even be on the endangered species list to basically destroy their cattle herds. So I'm battling that. But I don't know that there's anywhere in America that is as dysfunctional. Of course, you mentioned have the forest service. So the wildfires. I mean, I so I am dealing with California now on multiple levels. And there is no more dysfunctional anti-American government in America than in California where I potter valley is a tiny little community in California that I've been trying to help. They were going to take all their water out. Because of some fish. So you know, it's like you're choosing your fish, fish over people. It doesn't make any sense. But it's happening in your state. And it's just it's heartbreaking to me. I do think there's a long term plan for California and you're going to know a better than I, but you've got people that are willing to lean in and begin to lead. I long time ago, I wanted to build a Texas Public Policy Foundation in California with a 50 year plan, which is I think what it's going to take. And I was close and I got called into the first Trump White House and I didn't get a chance to do that. I think that we've got to turn California around. It's just there's no alternative. And I do believe it can be. Yeah, I mean, we used to have, you know, it was the depression era California federal, the Central Valley, Valley project, which brought water from into the sandwalk. And then we had the even bigger California water project. And that was brilliantly run. That was actually Jerry Brown's dad Pat Brown, when he was attorney general, you can see how we've changed. He sued the Sierra Club who tried to stop it. And he was the [BLANK_AUDIO] that got the aqueduct built within four years. And in the largest lift in the history in the world over the grapevine into Los Angeles. And those have kind of merged, but what everybody's confused about, even when we have wet years. And part of the problem is the tertiary California water project, even well, I think in 2014, we voted for a bond for seven billion dollars to build additional reservoir space. Probably about, I don't know, six million acre feet in very easy areas to build, low elevation, not a lot of environmental problems and stuff like that. We never built them, knew some took the money and he blew up four dams on the climate deliver that had, you know, they supplied recreation, hydroelectric power for 80,000 homes. They had irrigation and flood control and he blew them up with money half a billion dollars from that state bond. And now we're seeing this situation that even when we get it, and this year's supposed to be very wet, where El Nino, and we're looking at 110, maybe 120% of, and it goes, as it gets to the delt of the Sacramento River and the Sacramento and the San Joaquin, you know, we never built the peripheral canal, so it's dumped on one side and then it goes downstream and it's pumped into the aqueduct. But they have been taking, as you know, 70, 80% of that runoff for what they call water refurbishment in the delta for the little delta smelt fish. He's their canary in the mine, even though we have 35 treatment plants that, you know, dump a lot of nitrogen and we have a invasive species, so it's not even clear this well is lacking. It's not that it's not the problem, he's not getting enough water. It's the water that is in there that these very liberal communities still, for some reason, their treatment plants contribute to the problem and then the invasive species. But what I'm getting at is how it works in the real world is I drive to Stanford from, I live south of Fresno, and I go on Manny in Avenue, and this is the best farmland in the world. Yes. And it was always supplied by the San Luis Reservoir in the California water project in conjunction with the state, the Central Valley project. Federals, they've kind of blended, I guess, you know better than I do, but now there's thousands of acres taken out of production for these solar farms and they, yeah, it is. And we have a, a surfeit of daytime solar power. And then at night, we buy, we buy power from places that have cold generated electricity in Utah or Arizona, or we try to get hydroelectric, and then they said, well, we're not going to do this, we're going to store it. So they took this huge generation plant and moss landing, you probably heard, and made this battery storage, and it's blown up twice, toxic kiln. So now you see all these thousands of acres of this top, it's right near the eastern edge of the Central Valley, which is pretty much where the best farm line is because it drains into the middle, and it's got great drainage, and it's all the thousands of acres are being taken out for these solar farms that are going to produce more expensive, we're up to 40 cents a kilowatt, and we can't store it. They say we're going to store it, but they don't have the technology or the expertise, or they don't have the competent people to do it, because moss landing, which was a really nice power plant right on the central coast, now is, that's gone, and it's a battery storage, but it doesn't work, billions of dollars, and I don't know. Since sanity, it's literally insanity. It always was, when I was growing up, we wanted the federal government to help, because we had Reagan, and then Duck Maison, and then Pete Wilson, even Schwarzenegger, they were all defenders of the California water project, and it was a central valley project, federal, where that was a problem, but now it's flipped until you guys came in, and that, I mean, by that is, the state was always an advocate to get water, because Fresno County is the largest ag producer in terms of value of the product, sales. I think Fresno County is still, it used to be, at least, and now it's kind of reversed that we were one party state, and our only hope is the federal government. It used to be the state government, but now it's the enemy. It's funny, Victor. I find this every day, even when I will talk water in just a second, but just to respond to that last comment, every day, especially in the blue states, California, Washington, New York, etc. I will literally sit around my table with my farmers, and I'll say these are the words I never thought I would say, I'm with the federal government, and I'm here to help, right? It was Reagan that said, those are the scariest words in the human language, but it's actually true, and to live it, and it's, you know, these guys and girls who are 5'6/8/10th generation farmers literally with tears streaming down their face. It's just like, we don't know what else to do. The whole state, our government has turned against us. We have nowhere else to go, and I say, well, we're going to do as much as we can in our short period of time we have. That's why I've been working so hard on Potter Valley, and maybe I can get in a little bit more involved with this. The California way of governing, and when you look at the farmlands, happening in New York, too, as I mentioned, the farmland has been taken off. The grid, literally, to put on the grid as a solar farm, is just, it's a national security issue. In 2023 under Joe Biden, for the first time in American history, we became a net importer of food. We're no longer feeding ourselves, and to your point, we have the best farmland in the world, and it's because of this crazy governance, this radical left agenda, this putting fish ahead of people. It is unsustainable. We've got to have the long-term plan, which is my big takeaway from my time at USDA when I leave. I plan to stay for another two years. I'm almost halfway through. But while I'm here in agriculture, for this moment, I am going to leave with a 10, 20, 50-year plan in mind. I want to go back into the private sector, into my think tank world again. We've got to now deploy in a massive way on this food security, national security, deconsolidation, foreign-owned purchasing of farmland. That was going to ask you about that. I get a lot of people. To what degree is it true, or is it a myth, or is it really a national security danger that Chinese-affiliated companies are buying land, farmland near military bases? Is that actually happening? No, it's happening, and Pete Hegseth and I, one of the another great blessing of this administration, is our cabinet is so hand in glove on everything. I mean, no one's ever seen anything like it. We're just, we're all best friends. I mean, this morning alone, I think I've talked to three cabinet secretaries, about three big projects. But Pete Hegseth is one of them, and it is 100% true. We've got about 300,000 acres of farmland owned, not just by foreign, interest and foreign adversaries. This is China on record, and a lot of those are near military bases. So while we're waiting on Congress to act on that, and I think, hopefully, they will soon, I'm working with individual states. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been great on this in Arkansas. Our Christian home is governor before she came into the administration was great. So my current plan is to work side by side with key governors in key states. Unfortunately, I won't be able to do California, but other key agriculture states to, from the state perspective, to not only not allow the purchase of farmland by foreign adversaries, but where it has been purchased to start the process of clawing back in the name of national security. Yeah, that would be wonderful. There was a packing house that I used to work at as a teenager, nectarines, peaches, 12 miles here from Reedley. And about four years ago, one of their city employees was going by, and that was that bio lab that we, you might have heard of, that they had vaccination, Chinese government, and they had Ebola, COVID. They had all sorts of things like strep. And it was, no one knows what it was for. And it was leaking out of the plant or nobody would have seen it. I used to work there, but it was in downtown Reedley. And they were so shameless. It's, it's, it's, it's really scary. And so the other thing I had a question about is there's a couple of things that people miss. This isn't a real, a big policy, but it's the things like marketing orders and I'll give you an example. There were about 5,000 raisin growers. They're shrinking now because of cran, cranberry, cran raisins. And there's not, my family did it since, I don't know, we, we started farming in 1870. But now that Thompson vineyards to going out and almonds are going in, but still there's two. still a sun-made raisin, we were members of the co-op, and they had a marketing rule it said, it's been in litigation, I think it's over, but you did not own your raisin, your grapes if you made raisins. So if you decided with your green Thompson seedless that you didn't want to girdle them on for, make them big and for table grapes, or you didn't want to crush them for wine, if you chose to make them raisins, the US government then own your crop. And so when you dried it on a tray and it turned into a raisin, you couldn't sell it other than for personal consumption. And you had to deliver your raisins to an authorized packing house, and then that packing house decided what percentage of your crop would be allowed to be sold in the United States. And then that was a free market price. But what they called the reserve tonnage was then taken aside arbitrarily based on their version of what the market could handle, meanwhile Greek or Turkish raisins were coming in. But, yes, and then we almost went broke in fact, most of my friends went broken 83 because the market collapsed because of EU raisins. And then they declared the free tonnage 30% of your crop, 30% you got paid for. And then they sold 70% abroad at about $150 a ton. And the break even price was about 800 and we only got paid for 30% of our crop. So then there were some people said we're not going to turn our crop in. We're just going to stem them and wash them and sell them. And they got in huge lawsuits. I think they finally won. But it's that depression, the larger question I was trying to introduce, do you still have these depression era price supports that stifle the free market like that and take away control of the farmer? Yes, so it is such an important conversation that the way, I say this all the time, obviously our founding vision of freedom and self governance was the first, the best, the last, most important thing in world history in terms of countries and I'm so I just couldn't be more proud to be an American in fight for freedom every day. The challenge with our election system where you run every two years is that we don't have the benefit of thinking 20 years, 50 years, a hundred years in advance, like China does and Russia and others do, right? And so as a result of that, when transformational administrations come in, which I think we are one and I think we'll go down as one of the most out of the box, break the status quo across the board in history to really make the changes that need to be made in your example is one of them, there are dozens, hundreds still in effect across USDA and an agriculture. Having said that, we are deconstructing a lot of this and and putting a more market oriented system in place, agriculture is my heart. I was from the rest of my life after this job, fighting to make it right and fighting for these independent farmers and fighting to open the market to get more people back in. The Maha movement is going to really help us get there because that has allowed us to completely change the way we procure food at the federal level, the way we do dietary guidelines, the way we offer our 30 million school lunches. I mean, this is all really good news in the long run. But the layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of government that's in agriculture is unlike anything I've ever seen. I worked on the healthcare system for a long time. This is 100x more complicated. And when you talk about your food supply system, it becomes arguably much more important. But no one has ever, again, I'm such an out-of-the-box pick for Secretary of Agriculture. It's usually someone towards the end of their career, you know, someone that is of that world that, you know, is just kind of bandating the status quo. And we're going in and kind of pulling the whole thing up and on behalf of our farmers and our Americans. So yes, the short, the law, I guess the short answer is yes, those are still in effect a lot of them are. But I think the positive news is that we are making real moves toward a more free market system that benefits the farmer. Here's the other thing I'll say, Victor, that I think is really important. The amount that the government has to subsidize the farmers to keep them in business is astounding. And of course, you and I are decades-long, free market, less government. Now that I'm in it, if we don't continue that system with an off-ramp, and I'll talk about the off-ramp in a minute, but if we don't continue that system, we will lose the consolidation will continue. The off-shoring will continue, and we will lose every single independent farmer in this country because it is decades of bad policy that has gotten us here. And you know, I used to read the Wall Street Journal, but I used to read the Wall Street Journal op-eds before I was in this world. The farm bill is ridiculous. Stop all the subsidies. And I would, I'm like, yeah, the farm bill is ridiculous up on it. And now that I'm in it, I'm like, we would lose every single main exercise. I'm looking out at this avenue, and when I grew up and was born, I was born here in 53, and I went to high school, of course. And there were on this five-mile stretch of the avenue, there were over 100 small farmers, and they were 40 to 200 acres. Their parents were on the school board, little league, hospital board. No, it was a whole community. All the kids grew up doing farm work. They're all completely gone now, every one of them. And now I rent my, what's left, we had 180 acres, and now it's down to 40, my siblings left. They couldn't make it. And I can only do it by subsidizing it, by off farm. And I have a wonderful renter, but all of us are part of little mosaics and a 14,000 acre operation by a family court, and the corporations have taken it all over. And then the houses are rented out, often to people on section 8 housing, or because they don't, the corporate doesn't want the farmhouse, sometimes they just tear. But it really destroyed the local community, it wiped out the middle class. Completely. And that's true. It's terrible. It's true. It's true. This vision is that we open up these markets domestically through local procurement. You know, you kind of have a reemergence of the first-second generation farmers that come in. The fifth, fourth or fifth generation, like you can continue, that you can make enough money where you don't have to go through the big consolidation. While at the same time we're opening up markets around the world, which the president has done, we're increasing the price of commodities as we speak. We're at a three or four year high right now. The markets have opened up. We're not going to rely on China so much. We've opened up massive markets in eastern Asia and other places. While, actually, the most important point that I didn't make to you is all of this money, we announced a new program, right? Okay. We've got the $10 billion farmer bridge assistance we announced in December. President just announced $8 billion diesel fuel relief, and again, another conversation. What happens is the farmer barely survives to the next year. Okay. I can pay the bank. I can buy enough seed. I'm going to survive another year. Meanwhile, the seed companies, the fertilizer companies, the equipment companies, the tractor companies all continue to make 20%, 30% profits. And so this whole system has been set up to save the farmer, and it barely does while many are going out of business. With those who are enriching, and I've got a chart somewhere that shows the price of the truck goes from $80,000 to $100,000, the minute, you know, a new program is announced, because the seeds go up. So these big companies are smart, right? We have to get off this hamster will we're on, or we won't have freedom in this country because we're going to lose all of our farmers. Thank you for that. That's absolutely true. We're going to have a final break, and then we're going to come back with some final words because I've already taken the secretary over her a lot. I can go all day. This is so fun. Hello, this is Victor Davis Hansen for the Daily Signal. I have a new book out on September 8th of this year, and I think you're going to enjoy it. It's called Counter-Revolution, The Fall and Rise of Donald Trump, and The Maga Movement. It starts right after January 6th, and it details the lack of popularity of Donald Trump, the invective that he endured, the five civil and criminal trials, the effort to get him off the ballot, the raid on Marlago, the two impeachments earlier, one in which he was tried as a private citizen, and yet he came back. How did he come back, and why did he come back? I'll explain in the book how he defeated his prey. primary opponents, how he was outspent. He had a hostile media and he defeated the Democratic machine and Camela Harris. It starts on January 6th. It ends pretty much now in May of 2026. What's the title about? Don Trump is not a revolutionary. He's not a revisionist. He's a counter-revolutionary. This time around, he is not addressing just the symptoms of the progressive project of the last 50 years. He's talking about the causes, not just an open border, but how to stop illegal immigration entirely. Not just crime, but sending the National Garden to make sure cities are safe. Not just an Iranian nuclear threat, but ending that threat that seven other presidents had identified, but did not act on. Not just addressing the transgender issue or the Green New Deal and all of those issues that are so dear to the Democratic Party, but ending them, defunding NPR and PBS. So it is a counter-revolution to unwind and to roll back the entire progressive project of the last 50 years. I think you're going to like it. It's pretty interesting. It chronicles the greatest political comeback in our recent political history. Thank you very much. I'm Victor Davis-Hansen for the Daily Signal. And we're back with Secretary Rollins, Secretary of Agriculture. And what are you confident just as a final comment that I don't think anybody will-- believes we'll get back to 30% or 40% of course of people farming down to one and 1/2%. But do you see that there will be people farming in some ways that are not agribusiness? I don't have anything against agribusiness though the best farmers in the world, many of them are small farmers that became large. So I really like those guys. But there's some very smart people that are still farming. Maybe they teach high school or they do other stuff. But they're still farming 40 to 200 acres. It would be terrible to lose those people. But I thought my whole life, how do you say-- my twin brother was in a PhD program and he'd left to take over the whole 180 acres. And he was a wonderful farmer. And he had a master's degree in biology. And he-- but the markets, I mean, when he started farming this place, plums were, I think, $15 for 28 pounds. And when he finished, they were $4.5. And you could only make it if you had been vertically integrated. You had packing, trucking, marketing, brokerage. And he lost-- he was a brilliant farmer, but he couldn't do that. And then he went to work. And we lost a lot of the land. And he went to work for a sunkist. But that happened to everybody we knew. And you don't want to rig-- I mean, I go to Europe a lot. And I see the efforts, say, in France or Greece, to keep family farms. And it's almost archaic what they have to do to do it. And it's not nearly as efficient we are. But there has to be some middle ground is what I'm thinking. I agree. Here's what I'll end on. And it is a notice-- it's a note of encouragement. One of the very first trips I took was to visit some farmers in New Mexico. Not an area you think about farming much. Once a ranching, but not farming. And one of the first farms I went to was some organic lettuce farmers, two brothers. Dad was a professor, I think, at the University of New Mexico. Mom may have been a doctor. They were in their mid to late '20s. This is just maybe 10 years ago, so new. And they decided almost called to the land. Like they felt a calling to work the land, to make something of the land. And 10 years later, they on six acres and no three acres, they farm about 250,000 head of lettuce every year. Six full-time employees, they both support their families. And they absolutely love their way of life. And they sell directly to this local schools and hospitals. And I say, this is the way. And again, had I ever planned to be the Secretary of Agriculture to spend so much time in media, on social media, defending this way of life, working for real change. But I do believe, I personally, that I've maybe got as put me in this position at this moment, to work to send the message, to work alongside Bobby Kennedy, to make America healthy, and to put farming and ranching in real food back at the middle of all of that. And those that really benefit our country and freedom, but those two brothers and those like him, who maybe want to stay in business, want to start a business. And now, because of these changes we've made, are able to do so. And maybe the final thing I'll say, just to shout out to my boss, he's really the one who started this. I mean, you, Victor, have been such a great advocate on the America side, and we can't offshore. But there were many, many, many, many people who supported this consolidation with this constant drive for efficiency and lower cost, right? And President Trump comes down that escalator and kind of blows up the whole Republican orthodoxy on it. And then the people come out in droves to support it. And all of a sudden, here we are 10 years later. And he was right. And when we look at what has happened, especially an ag, but really in manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, all of the above, he was right. But agriculture, we have to reverse the trend in his leadership and with the entire cabinet. And with all of our farmer partners out there, I think we're going to be able to do it. But when I walk out the door in two years, it doesn't stop then for me. I will never stop fighting for this. And now that I understand it, we've got to do better for our farmers and for our country. There are very rare species. Every time I see guy, they can, they're very rare citizens of the most patriotic, most risk-taking, most versatile, most eccentric, my grandparents, and my brothers and I was a full-time farmer for eight years. And it's worth saving somehow. And I'm really applauding your efforts. I can't thank you enough for being on for so long and gave us more time than we even thought possible. But everybody-- - Any time, Victor. - Yes, be sure to support in this midterm election, the type of things everybody that the secretary has been calling for, and let's hope that things go well on Tuesday. - Amen. - Yes, okay. - God bless you, thank you. - Thank you. - Thank you for tuning in to the Daily Signal. Please like, share, and subscribe to be notified for more content like this. You can also check out my own website at victorhanson.com and subscribe for exclusive features in addition.