Amanda Little, Columnist

Trump's Beef Gambit Is Easy Pickings for Biden and Harris

The White House wants to fight a culture war over red meat. Democrats shouldn’t take the bait.

August 17, 2020 at 1:11 PM UTC

Amanda Little is former Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering agriculture and climate. She is a professor at Vanderbilt University and author of “The Fate of Food: What We'll Eat in a Bigger, Hotter, Smarter World.”

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At a rally in Iowa last week, Vice President Mike Pence warned farmers and ranchers of a coming war on red meat. “Senator Kamala Harris says she would change the dietary guidelines in this country to reduce the amount of red meat Americans can eat,” said Pence to a spirited crowd. “We’re not going to let Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cut America’s meat!”

Pence’s battle cry echoed Trump’s declaration in 2016 that Democrats were waging a “war on coal.” Having failed to revitalize the coal industry, Trump and Pence want to make red meat the new coal. Biden and Harris should be careful not to take the bait — as Hillary Clinton did in 2016, when she vowed to “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”