Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem struck back at Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg Tuesday, wondering if the former mayor of New York City knew anything about farming.
Noem, who is also a farmer, told “Fox & Friends” that she wasn’t sure that Bloomberg “would be able to turn on our corn planter.”
A video from 2016 showed Bloomberg addressing the Distinguished Speakers Series at the University of Oxford Saïd Business School, Bloomberg was explaining why he believed there was a cultural and political divide in America: farmers and factory workers just didn’t have the “gray matter” to adjust to the information age.
“The agrarian society lasted 3,000 years and we could teach processes. I could teach anybody, even people in this room, no offense intended, to be a farmer,” Bloomberg said.
“That comment is nothing but pompous ignorance,” Noem said. “Who does Mike Bloomberg think he is? Every single day farmers work long hours but they don’t just have to deal with the labor side. They understand genetics and engineering, biology, chemistry.” The governor noted that everyday American farmers work to “feed the world” and that Bloomberg is, once again, showing how “out of touch [he is] with everyday Americans.”
Noem suggested that the Democratic candidate could get more in touch with farmers if he could “spend a day” on a farm “to ride horses, rope steers, go out there and drive G.P.S.-controlled tractors, computer-programmed grain handling systems and then internationally market your commodities to pay your bills and continue to do what they do best.”
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