The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 27 episode of theDaily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Thanks to President Donald Trump’s big budget bill and Republicans in Congress, funding has been canceled for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That’s only going to bother pointy-headed liberals, right? Well, no. It also cuts funding to radio stations in rural and remote areas, ones that rely on those stations for crucial updates and other information. Speaking to The New York Times, GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski, who opposed the bill, sounded absolutely shocked that Trump and Republicans would harm their own voters so cavalierly. Yet this has been the story on one front after another. Tariffs, health care, the safety net, and even issues like green energy and immigration. Will there ever come a point where Democrats can capitalize on this betrayal? Lynlee Thorne is a Democratic operative who organizes for the party deep in rural areas as the political director of RuralGroundGame.org, so we invited her on to talk about all this. Thanks for coming on, Lynlee.
Lynlee Thorne: Thanks for having me, Greg.
Sargent: So the Times reports that due to Trump’s cuts, as many as 245 public broadcasting outlets in rural areas are at risk of closing. In fact, more than half of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s budget went to local stations, per the Times. Many of these stations are now cutting back drastically. These are lifelines for people in these areas, right, in some cases, the only source of local information?
Thorne: Very often that is true. It’s a real gut punch. And I think something for people to keep in mind is that it’s not just the radio stations—because a lot of rural people even now cannot get radio reception in their rural area from their home. So often when there is a crisis or a power outage or something similar, people are having to go to their neighbors who might be able to get radio reception and hear that news through the grapevine.
Sargent: How important are these stations to these places? As far as I can tell, they’re really critical. They’re in some cases a matter of life or death when it comes to anticipating extreme weather or dealing with other really dangerous local conditions. What does it mean for these rural areas—these stations?
Thorne: It means to be seen. In preparation for this interview, I turned my own radio on. And the fact that they’re covering stories from Broadway and Fulks Run and these little bitty towns that are never covered by a local TV station—you’re talking about the local football team, the local VFW event, whatever it is, that just isn’t covered by any other outlet by any other means. Maybe a weekly or monthly newspaper, but that’s about it. And then looking at what happened in Alaska or the recent flooding we’ve had in Western North Carolina, radio stations are critical in emergency situations as well.
Sargent: Yeah. And so you’re talking to us straight from the Shenandoah Valley in Western Virginia. I think those towns that you mentioned are there, right?
Thorne: We’re north of where the flooding was in far southwest Virginia. We have had pretty extreme flooding here in Rockingham County in the past. And yeah, emergency situations are not the only reason why a rural radio is important, but that’s obviously when you would notice that it could have a life-threatening impact.
Sargent: Well, Lisa Murkowski, the senator who represents Alaska, a very rural state with lots of remote territory, voted against this bill. And she sounded absolutely shocked that her fellow Republicans would do Trump’s bidding when it would absolutely screw Trump and GOP voters. She told the Times that this was driven by a “blind allegiance to the president’s desires.” And she said that fear of Trump’s anger overrode GOP lawmakers concerns for their own constituents who, by the way, are also Trump voters. Your reaction to all this?
Thorne: Stunned that someone like Senator Murkowski is surprised by this, but also it makes sense. This is actually what we’re seeing from a lot of voters in rural Virginia this year. Part of what our organization has been doing for the last several months is calling folks who are registered to vote but haven’t been participating very consistently in elections. And we’ve been reaching out to make them aware of the coming cuts to our health care—not just Medicaid, but how this will impact the ACA marketplaces as well as the cost increases from Trump’s tariffs. And people are stunned that this is happening. Sometimes our volunteers are emotionally struggling because they feel like they are breaking horrific news to people in real time. And people are pissed and scared and feel a little blindsided. So while those of us who have been paying attention are well aware of these cuts, this is devastating news to a lot of people in rural spaces.
Sargent: Well, it’s easy to make fun of Lisa Murkowski—and we all do, and sometimes for good reason. Where has she been for the past 30 years? The Republicans have been screwing rural voters relentlessly for decades. And yet at the same time, she gets at an interesting point here, which is that at a certain point, you expect GOP lawmakers to not screw their voters on literally everything at all times. And this was a thing where Republican lawmakers could be counted on to defend their constituents a little bit. Maybe there’s a prejudice among many conservatives against public radio, but conservative lawmakers would say, OK, but we really need these types of communications outlets in these places, so we’ll continue to support this stuff. And now when Trump comes along and waves a magic wand, they just fall in line. So she’s right to lament that, don’t you think?
Thorne: Yes, I guess I’ll be generous and say sure. My member of Congress, Representative Ben Clein, was at a recent event and I guess the local Democrats had a chalkboard out making sure that people knew that he recently voted to cut Medicaid and Medicare. Apparently he didn’t like that information being out in the world and simply wanted them to remove the sign. I think a lot of what we’re seeing here—the attacks on the Smithsonian, the attacks on our history—they don’t want us to know the truth. Radio is just one of the tethers that helps rural people communicate and stay connected to each other. Every single tether to the truth they can find they want to sever. I think it’s hard for Democrats to recognize that for a long time, rural people have heard about Democrats through the lens of Republicans because they’ve been the only ones to bother to show up and communicate with us. So at the same time that it is true, that we should be talking about the real harm Republicans are unleashing on their own communities, Democrats need to also recognize that we haven’t been bothering to show up to participate, to engage in meaningful ways.
I think a good example of Democratic neglect and lack of credibility is the recent radio ad run by the DSCC talking about, Thanks for listening, and basically saying, Republicans are cutting your rural radio stations. Well, Where we been as Democrats? Where have we been on the air supporting these stations, running ads, making sure that we’re communicating our message, and connecting with rural people long before this happened?
Sargent: Well, yeah, the story of what’s happened with Democrats in rural America is horrible, and I want to get into that in a second. But at first, I want to draw you out on this point. It seems to me that the failure of Democrats to engage comes back to bite them at times like this. This bill screws rural America in every which way you can possibly imagine. And yet, it becomes easier for Republican representatives to get away with this precisely because Democrats aren’t in these areas really taking it to them and telling their constituents what these lawmakers are doing to them. Is that right?
Thorne: That’s exactly right. And we’re really fortunate in Virginia this year. We have 100 Democratic nominees for all 100 House of Delegates races across the Commonwealth. We have some really truly fantastic local public servants who have stepped up because they refuse to tell their kids there’s no hope, that there’s nothing to fight for. They believe there is, and that’s why they’ve taken this on. And a lot of those folks could really benefit from more resources to get their message in front of more voters on a number of platforms and [to] catch up from being so far behind in the communications that we’ve allowed to languish for far too long.
Sargent: Well, just to reiterate, you’re in the Shenandoah Valley in Western Virginia, and Virginia has big elections this fall for governor and state legislature. That’s what you were talking about just a minute ago. What are you seeing out there with these voters more specifically? What are rural Americans in these places who are making decisions right now about how to vote this fall saying? Are they open to Democratic appeals? What’s working for Democrats in appealing to them, and what’s not working for them?
Thorne: Not breaking news, but the brand is pretty damaged—and not just in rural America, but certainly in rural America as well. That’s why I think the folks who are running for the House of Delegates are really important to focus on, particularly in rural areas, because they may be able to be carrying the banner for our party and have earned credibility through their smaller local connections in a way that maybe some of our statewide or higher-profile candidates cannot. I think people might possibly be open to Democrats, but there’s a few things happening right now. One thing people are waking up to the real cuts that are coming from Republicans and the Trump administration. That is happening. When we first started making our outreach to voters about the coming Medicaid cuts, we were seeing that under 30 percent of people were even aware that this was happening. Now, as we move closer to the election, we’re seeing well over 60 percent of the people that we continue to reach out are aware, but they’re not always sure who is to blame.
I do think people are open to having the conversation about health care in particular. That has come up for us again and again and again. But mobilizing those folks to vote is going to be really hard. People are feeling a tremendous amount of despair. They’re working two or three jobs. They’re struggling to find a home. You’re seeing 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds still having to live with mom and dad because accessing their own place just isn’t a reality even if they are working pretty hard. It’s hard to get people to show up and participate in election when they’re feeling that type of economic pain and pressure on a daily basis and you’re coming to their door saying, Hey, the other side is making it worse. We really need to have a much clearer picture of what it is we can do to address this at the state level.
Sargent: And what about Trump’s image in these places? Obviously, Trump is immensely successful in rural America as you probably live every day. And I would assume that it’s easier for Democrats to turn some of these rural voters against the local Republican congressmen than it is to turn them against Trump. What are they saying about Trump—those voters—right now? And I’m not talking about Democratic voters, however many there are left in these places. I’m really talking about voters who are, I guess, independents or maybe soft Republicans who are at least open to seeing Trump as fallible. What are those voters saying about Trump right now?
Thorne: I would say our focus has largely been on folks who we have reason to believe might be favorable toward Democrats to begin with. In Virginia, we have open primaries, so we do not register by party. So we have to rely heavily on past voting behavior and some other data to inform us about their partisanship. So we’re really looking at less likely voters. This is significant because we lost the governorship in 2021 by, I think, a margin of around 58,000 votes, something like that. Just in my congressional district, for previous years, we’ve had well over 300,000 voters who just haven’t shown up. We can clear the statewide margin pretty easily in rural spaces even if we’re just looking at folks that we think are likely to vote for Democrats if they are to vote at all.
The real thing that would make a huge difference is talking to enough of those folks and really giving them a reason to show up, which I think our House of Delegates candidates are the best positioned to do because their message is local and might actually connect in a real authentic and genuine way, in a way that is very hard for statewide campaigns to have the capacity to cover that much ground and really have the face time with voters. I’m not sure. What I see on the—because we do talk to people who might call themselves independents and maybe soft Republican voters. I certainly see people express dismay and some frustration, but I felt like I was seeing a lot of that in the lead-up to the 2024 election. And we are where we are now. So when it comes to people walking in the ballot box, I want to be very cautious and not express too much unearned confidence about where we stand right now with voters here in Virginia or anywhere else in the country.
Sargent: Understood. I take two things from what you’re saying. One is that an untold story among Democratic organizers in some of these rural areas is that they’re really waking up to the possibility of going out and getting those voters who would vote Democratic but just don’t vote. [These voters] are really being left on the table because they’re in these rural places and represent such a minority in them, the party just assumes that they’re not really there for the getting—but they are. That’s one story. Then the other piece of this, I think, is that in an off year, which this is, and the 2026 midterms will also be, not having Trump at the top of the ticket is a real boon in these places because you can maybe make a real appeal to swing voters and try to turn them against the local Republican without Trump muddying the picture with all his cultural politics and stuff. Is that right?
Thorne: That’s certainly something we’re looking at. One of the projects we piloted last year we called the Storyteller Project. It’s pretty simple. It is just putting real people on video and having them share the real personal policy impacts that they’re facing. We’ve interviewed a number of folks who are Medicaid recipients, people who depend on veterans benefits, Social Security, Medicare, and they’ve shared with us the very personal reasons why they are feeling really uncomfortable right now, really scared about what their future looks like. We think it’s important to put those people on screen. I think when you see Republicans attacking truth and our connections to each other, we know telling the truth makes them very deeply uncomfortable—all the more reason for us to do it. And it’s pretty simple. It brings a lot of real authentic voices in rather than relying on flashy scripted Beltway ads.
Sargent: Yeah, I can certainly see that. Just to close this out, one thing that’s really mystifying about Trump for a lot of Democrats is that on the one hand, his cultural appeals to rural America and his support there have both outdone other Republicans. He’s been tremendously successful in these places. But at the same time, he’s really, really screwing them over, almost in a way that’s worse than the Republicans over the last 50 years. There’s the Trump tariffs, which hit farm country hard. There are these enormous health care cuts we discussed, which are creating these huge problems for rural hospitals across the country. Again, that’s a real lifeline in those places. Many of them have very little access to health care. The other stuff we discussed. How do you think about those two stories where he’s doing better in these places than even Republicans traditionally have while shafting them even more royally than anyone else? How do we understand that?
Thorne: Oh, man. That’s a question. And I don’t have a clean answer except to say that simply showing up and communicating to people, validating their anger and expressing that himself, I think, felt really validating for people who felt left behind. And to me, it’s a yes and yes, and let’s not burn it all down? Yes, you’ve been left behind, but don’t we still care about our neighbors? Isn’t that who we are? I do believe that the majority of rural Americans do actually really give a damn about their neighbors. I believe that. Not all of them, but certainly enough of them. But we haven’t tried to connect. We haven’t gone to them to make sure that we’re lifting up rural leaders and embracing rural ideas and making sure that rural people are the drivers of what happens in their community rather than saying, Bless your hearts. Here’s a little program for you now. Why don’t y’all like that? Oh well, we didn’t like it because we weren’t at the table to create it.
There’s a lot of brilliant people in rural communities who feel like their hometowns are worth fighting for and, I think, can be fantastic partners and allies to folks in cities and suburbs—because a lot of our issues are honestly very similar. The solutions might look a little different, but a lot of the core problems that people are experiencing are very much the same. They don’t want us to be on each other’s side, but really we can be. But there’s no shortcut. We have to communicate. We have to engage. We have to show empathy. And we haven’t done that for far too long. And now we’re in a place where we have got to catch up somehow and find ways to reconnect with each other.
Sargent: Well, I think we’re going to certainly learn a lot from this fall’s elections in Virginia, particularly in some of those rural places, places like where you live. Lynlee Thorne, thank you so much for coming on. That was really interesting. Appreciate it.
Thorne: Thanks, Greg.
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