Bill Maher Gets Indiana’s Own John Mellencamp to do a Double Take By Telling Him ‘Trump Wrote a Lot of Checks to Farmers’

Bill Maher had to stop music star and MAGA-critic John Mellencamp for one moment during their Club Random podcast on Monday to point out one thing: “Trump wrote a lot of checks to farmers,” Maher said.

That seemed to baffle Mellencamp. The “Small Town” singer — who grew up in farm country in Indiana and has been a big supporter of farmers — let out a giant “HUH?!”

“Trump wrote a lot of checks to farmers,” Maher said a bit more deliberately, “because he f*cked them often with like, tariffs and stuff.”

The comic then said Trump had to do it because he previously made deals that hurt the agricultural industry.

“He wanted to show China who’s boss, and who pays? It’s the people who sell soy beans to China,” Maher said.

Maher’s remarks comes a few months after President Donald Trump gave $12 billion in “economic assistance” to American farmers who were grappling with dwindling foreign sales.

“And as you know, the farmers like me,” Trump said in December, “based on voting trends.”

They got onto the topic when Mellencamp said he started Farm Aid to support people like the ones he grew up around; Mellencamp launched the annual concert in 1985 with Willie Nelson and Neil Young.

“All of us were naive enough to think that if we do this show, then the politicians will go ‘These guys have a good point. we need to help the small family farmer,'” Mellencamp said. “No. It’s going to take more than a f*ckin’ concert.”

That’s when Maher jumped in and seemed to stump Mellencamp with Trump’s check-writing. The singer didn’t say much about it afterwards, instead opting to ask Maher about the first time he met Trump.

Maher said it was at a club in New York in the 1990s, and he saw him another time at a party at the Playboy mansion. The Real Time star said Trump was “very cordial” and that his “power suite” made him “stick out” at the Playboy party. The next time he saw Trump was at their much-publicized dinner at the White House last year, Maher said.

Mellencamp then shared his own story. He said he met Trump at a Super Bowl in the ’80s and that Trump was buying him popcorn and Cokes.

“He couldn’t have been nicer,” Mellencamp said.

The singer said that was the case when he bumped into Trump a few other times afterwards. He has not been complimentary of Trump’s time in the White House, though, with Mellencamp branding Trump a “madman” in 2018 for his tariff plan.

Watch above via Club Random on YouTube.

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