and this is with a conflict going on.
>> Although President Trump retained strong positive
influence among Republican primary voters in light of
his overall slipping poll numbers, this week's
episode of Inside Wisconsin Politics considered the
optics of Republicans running for Congress or
governor campaigning alongside him. Here's what
they had to say about it. >> If you look back in
history more on the Democratic side, there is a
history of some candidates not only not sure if they
want to sit next to an unpopular president in a
midterm election. In 2010, President Obama came to
Madison. There was a big question of whether Russ
Feingold was going to appear on the stage. In the
end, he did. But all the weeks leading up to it, his
campaign wasn't sure he might be in Africa. He had
some other things going on. And that was really a
political question of does he want to be seen with him?
And he ended up losing that race. That was the Tea
Party wave before it was just two years ago.
President Biden visited Madison off that disastrous
debate performance. Tammy Baldwin was elsewhere. She
didn't come to Madison to be with the president.
That's about campaign optics.
>> The president right now has some of his lowest
approval ratings throughout his time in office. But
farmers in particular have really helped deliver him
victories. I believe in his last election, he won the
vast, vast majority of farm dependent counties in the
country. And yet a lot of his policies, tariff
policies in particular, have really been connected
with some of the pain that farmers have been feeling.
So tariffs that have caused, you know, weakened overseas
markets for for corn and soy, and then increased
prices on steel and aluminum. So we have seen
changes in his policies in ways that are, I think,
aimed really directly at trying to appeal to these
farmers. Earlier this week, he signed an executive
order to lower some tariffs on agricultural equipment
in particular. And so now he's coming to Wisconsin to
talk directly to farmers and kind of try to make
sure that that part of his base is secure.
>> The Republicans need this area, and they need
Trump's voters to come out when he is not on the
ballot. Republicans across the state struggle to get
turnout, especially in western and northern
Wisconsin. That is the Maga base of this state in the
seventh and the third. And without those voters, they
could really struggle in the fall. So they actually
need to attach themselves even closer to Donald Trump
at this point, even if it looks like, politically