Here & Now

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