Country rock legend Charlie Daniels ripped Michael Bloomberg (D) on Monday after the presidential hopeful’s belittling remarks about farmers resurfaced, noting that the billionaire knows “as much about farming as a hog knows about an airplane.”
“Hey Bloomberg you know as much about farming as a hog knows about an airplane, so how are you going to teach somebody else how to do it, Better stay in NYC where corn comes in cans,” the “Uneasy Rider: singer said in a tweet to his 985k Twitter followers.
Bloomberg’s past remarks about farmers, which he made during an Oxford University forum in England in 2016, resurfaced over the weekend. He told the crowd that he 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, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn. You could learn that,” Bloomberg said.
“Then we had 300 years of the industrial society,” he continued. “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 veered the conversation into the reality of the “information economy” and suggested that farmers lack the intellect or “gray matter” to keep up with the new economic realities and advanced technologies associated with modern life.
“Now comes the information economy and [it] is fundamentally different because it’s built around replacing people with technology and the skill sets that you have to learn are how to think and analyze, and that is a whole degree level different,” he stated. “You have to have a different skill set, you have to have a lot more gray matter.”
The remarks prompted sharp responses from both sides of the political aisle, from Donald Trump Jr. to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) supporters to Vice President Mike Pence.
Bloomberg’s campaign has since claimed that the remarks were taken grossly out of context and accused the Sanders campaign of pushing out “falsehoods.” His campaign manager Kevin Sheekey added that Bloomberg has “traveled to 26 states” and “during that time, he has met with farmers and heard directly about the struggles they face.”
As Breitbart News’s John Nolte explained, Bloomberg’s denial is overwhelmingly weak:
Obviously, anyone who watches the original video, or who reads the full context of the transcript, knows Bloomberg was definitely not taken out of context — not even close.
To begin with, he’s not talking about agrarian society as it existed 3,000 years ago, he’s talking about an agrarian society that lasted 3,000 years. Everything he says, everything he refers to, is in the present tense. This is made clear when he says, “I could teach anybody, even people in this room so no offense intended, to be a farmer.”
He’s not talking about teaching people to farm 3,000 years ago, he’s talking about teaching them to be a farmer today.
…
The fact that he’s speaking in present tense is made even clearer when he says, “and the skill-sets you have to learn are how to think and analyze, and that is a whole degree/level different. You have to have a different skill-set; you have to have a lot more gray matter.”
Again, he is not talking about how farmers from 3,000 years ago would lack the gray matter and skill-set, he’s talking about the “gray matter” problem with farmers (and factory workers) today.
This is far from the first time Daniels has expressed his political leanings on social media. He praised President Trump last year for “standing in front of the United Nations and proclaiming the greatness of America and his intentions to keep it that way.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.