What Donald Trump Has Said About Iowa, Sourced

Iowa

Iowa has backed Donald Trump three times. This is what he thinks of the state, what his policies are costing it, and how the senators Iowa sends to Washington have voted. All of it sourced, much of it in his own words and theirs.

What he says about Iowa

To your face, at a rally in your state

How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?

At a rally in Iowa · November 2015

He was angry that Iowans were telling pollsters they preferred Ben Carson. He went on to win the state in 2016 and has carried it three times. The contempt was aimed at the very voters he was asking to support him.

Sources: Fox News

What his policies are doing here

He cut off your biggest customer, then billed the country to cover it

We took $28 billion and we gave it to the farmers… no other president would have ever done that.

Trump, on his farm bailout

Iowa is the nation's top pork producer and its second-largest soybean grower, and China is the biggest buyer of both. Trump's tariffs cost Iowa that market: economists estimated the trade war would cost the state's soybean farmers up to $624 million, and U.S. growers are now forecasting a fourth straight year of operating losses. His remedy was federal checks, about $900 million to Iowa farmers in the latest $12 billion round, paid to cover damage his own policy caused. Even Iowa's senior Republican senator, Chuck Grassley, tried to rein the tariffs in; the White House threatened to veto his bill.

Sources: Trump's own words (Fox News) · What the tariffs cost Iowa (CBS News) · Iowa's $900M share (Des Moines Register) · Grassley's fight against the tariffs (AP)

The cuts headed for your rural hospitals

Well, we all are going to die.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), to a constituent who warned the cuts would kill people · May 2025

Trump's "big, beautiful bill" cuts more than $700 billion from Medicaid over a decade, which the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates will leave millions more people uninsured. In Iowa, Medicaid is the main source of revenue for the rural hospitals and community health centers that serve the most vulnerable. When an Iowan at a Parkersburg town hall shouted that people would die, Ernst replied, "we all are going to die," then posted a mock apology filmed in a cemetery.

Sources: The town hall (AP) · What the bill cuts (USA Today)

How the people you send to Washington have voted

And the Iowans clearing the way

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Sen. Chuck Grassley and Sen. Joni Ernst

Grassley chairs the Judiciary Committee that advanced Kash Patel to run the FBI and Todd Blanche to run the Justice Department, two of the officials profiled in this record, even as he breaks with Trump on the tariffs hurting Iowa's farms. Ernst has defended the Medicaid cuts to the Iowans who came to object. The state that stands to lose the most, on trade and on health care, keeps returning the people voting yes.

Sources: Grassley's committee advanced the nominees (PBS) · Grassley on the tariffs (AP)