BREAKING: Big-Ag Buddy Derrick Van Orden Bullied Wisconsin Family Farmers in DC Meeting
MADISON, Wis. — Today, the Wisconsin Independent told us what we already know: Washington’s schoolyard bully is too busy schmoozing with the rich agri-giants in Washington who fund his campaign to think about western Wisconsin farmers back home. Can’t cough up a check? He doesn’t have time for you. Especially if you’re getting in the way of his buddies buying up the family farmland Van Orden campaigns on representing.
Worse than your drunk uncle at Christmas dinner, this sitting congressman allegedly pointed fingers in the faces of grown men and slapped the table like an ‘80s caricature of a bad boss after a martini lunch. When local farmers from his own district made the time to travel all the way from Wisconsin to advocate for family farms, Derrick Van Orden offered “the most disappointing meeting [the farmer] ever had with a legislator.”
Rather than talking about the Farm Bill or answer questions about how he would support small Wisconsin farms, Derrick Van Orden launched into a deranged rant and lied about cuts to SNAP benefits in a show that would’ve done Donald Trump proud. Hate to break it to Derrick Van Orden, but that’s just not Wisconsin nice.
Wisconsin Independent: Western Wisconsin Farmers Say Van Orden Behavior Derailed Meeting On Agricultural Policy
By: Olivia Herken
Two farmers from western Wisconsin are speaking out after a meeting last month on agricultural policy with Republican Rep. Derrick Van Orden was derailed by the congressman when he and his staff interrupted and yelled at them, taking issue with the farmers’ apparent political affiliations.
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The meeting started out with a civil conversation between the farmers and one of Van Orden’s staff members, both Bruce and Von Ruden said. But when Van Orden joined the meeting, Von Ruden said, the congressman almost immediately narrowed in on him for having criticized Van Orden for failing to support family farms.
He “just went into quite a barrage of things, pointing directly at me and not really concerned about anybody else that was in the room,” Von Ruden, a Westby dairy farmer and the president of the union, told the Wisconsin Independent. He called it a “scolding.”
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“It is part of a pattern that is disturbing, and it’s not that he’s part of the other party, quote-unquote, that makes me not want to vote for him,” Bruce told the Wisconsin Independent. “I voted for Republicans when I believed that they stand up for small farms and agricultural policy. But I’m not going to vote for someone who just shouts me down when I’m trying to have those conversations.”
The Wisconsin Independent reached out to Van Orden’s office for comment but did not get a response.
Van Orden is running this fall for a second term to represent Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District. He has a history of explosive incidents.
In 2023, Van Orden cursed at teenage Senate pages who were taking photographs in the U.S. Capitol rotunda. While running for office in 2021, he yelled at a teenage library page over a Pride Month display at his local library. He has also cursed at White House staff, had heated confrontations on the House floor, and interrupted President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address earlier this year.
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But when Bruce asked Van Orden questions about the farm bill and the CBO report, he said, it seemed to set the congressman off.
According to Bruce, Van Orden went into a “stream of consciousness, run-on sentence monologue” about the CBO, Bruce said, calling the group “Democratic liars” and the report “bullshit.” He said Van Orden looked agitated and was slapping his desk, saying, “That kind of agitation just built into what really felt like being subjected to a tirade rather than having a conversation.”
Bruce said that Van Orden and his staff were dismissive of him because they believed he was a Democrat, saying he wore “the other jersey” and would never vote for Van Orden anyway.
Bruce, who has been advocating for farm issues since 2017, said it was the most disappointing meeting he’s ever had with a legislator.
“I think that’s inappropriate. I don’t want other farmers or other constituents, no matter what their business is, to have to face that same dynamic,” Bruce said.
“It’s good that we have different opinions, and we just have to work to that more common ground. So how can we work with somebody that doesn’t really want to work with the other side of the aisle at all?” Von Ruden said.
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“If he can’t give us the time of day or listen, if this is a dynamic that’s going to continue, it’s untenable,” Bruce said. “And so that’s why I now at this point want to either see him turn that page and start to have better conversations and treat his constituents better and his peers better, or we need a different representative that can have that integrity and will have those conversations.”
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