Tipsheet

VP Mike Pence Takes Direct Aim at Michael Bloomberg's Elitist Comments About Farmers

Vice President Mike Pence hit back at Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg for comments he made in 2016 about how easy is to be a farmer and he could teach anyone to plant crops.

"I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer.. It's a process. You dig a hole, you put a seed in, put dirt on top, add water and up comes the corn," Bloomberg told an audience at the University of Oxford Saïd Business School. "[Y]ou could learn that."

"Then we had 300 years of the industrial society. You put the piece of metal on the lathe, you turn the crank in the direction of the arrow and you can have a job," he continued. "And we created a lot of jobs. At one point 98 percent of the world worked in agriculture. Today it's two percent of the United States."

In on Pence's Twitter account, a video titled, "So God Made a Farmer," and featured the speech given by radio host Paul Harvey at the 1978 Future Farmers of America convention:

"On his planned paradise and said, 'I need a caretaker!' So, God made a farmer! God said I need somebody to get up before dawn and milk cows and work all day in the fields, milk cows again, eat supper and then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board. So, God made a farmer! I need somebody willing to sit up all night with a newborn colt… and watch it die, then dry his eyes and say ‘Maybe next year.’"

The video features video and pictures of farmers working and ends with words, "To the farmer in all of us."