Three Rural White Guys

3RWG discusses Senator Schmitt failing in dramatic fashion, and works through all the pros and cons to the "largest steel mill in American history" being built right here in our backyard in Southeast Iowa.

This week, 3RWG wades into Red Scare 2.0 and the increasingly meaningless way words like communist, socialist, and fascist get thrown around in American politics. What do those terms actually mean? Are the Constitution and our political institutions still strong enough to keep authoritarians in check? And what does America’s declining Freedom House score say about how well those guardrails are really holding?

The guys start with Cardinals baseball, Waffle House hash browns, beer “silos,” and Kellen discovering that apparently everyone in rural America except him knows what noodling is. Along the way, we revisit the Sophie Cunningham/WNBA culture-war circus, an Iowa gubernatorial candidate sharing a Fauci article that undermines his own claim, and the broader problem of politics infecting damn near everything—even a basketball game.

Then the conversation turns to billionaires, activist investors, progressive taxation, economic insecurity, and why people become more willing to embrace political extremism when they feel like the system has stopped working for them.

And just when the promised meme harvest is finally supposed to begin, vMix freezes and kills the video.

A perfectly normal episode of Three Rural White Guys.

The guys discuss the real meaning of freedom, political purity tests, and Caitlin Clark's friends.

Trump’s latest voter-fraud push and recycled Red Scare bullshit are sold as politics, but the damage is anything but abstract. Mike and Kellen break down the SAVE Act propaganda, the difference between democratic socialism and communism, and why Democrats should reclaim local control without abandoning civil rights. Then Mike explains exactly what “nothing personal” means when anti-trans politics drives your kid out of Iowa—and the conversation widens to ICE violence, the Iran war, corruption, and a president nobody in Congress seems willing to check. Politics is personal when real families are the ones paying the price.

Breaking down Trump’s bizarre address to the nation, the pile of recycled election grievances and questionable “evidence” behind it, and the real reason for the spectacle: pressuring Congress to pass the SAVE Act. The bill could create new barriers for women, young voters, military families, rural Americans, and anyone who cannot easily produce the right paperwork—and why this looks a whole lot more like voter suppression than election security. Plus, is Trump already laying the groundwork to call the 2026 midterms illegitimate?

3RWG dives into Trump's incessant desire to redecorate, the non-stop chaos all around the Trump administration, the war-on-war-off-war-on that isn't a war in Iran, and the Great Issue Swap of 2026.

You’ve heard it before: “The two-party system sucks.” “Both parties are corrupt.” “They’re all the same.”

There are plenty of reasons to be frustrated with American politics. Let’s be honest about what’s usually happening when that line comes from the right: it’s often a Republican trying to avoid admitting what their party has become.

One party is imperfect, frustrating, and often too cautious. The other has spent years defending chaos, cruelty, corruption, conspiracy theories, attacks on democracy, and a political movement built around one man’s ego.

Those are not the same thing.

In this episode we break down the “both parties suck” argument, why it sounds reasonable on the surface, and why it so often functions as a way to dodge accountability for the Republican Party’s collapse.

Mike returns from “lockup,” Jacob becomes America’s most wanted algae kingpin, and somehow that’s only the beginning.

This week the guys dive into the algae-covered Reflecting Pool saga, Trump’s birthday UFC spectacle at the White House, the mysterious Iran “peace deal” that may or may not actually exist, the politics of war profiteering, and the latest twists in the Epstein file controversy. Along the way they debate corruption, military spending, stock-market grifts, billionaire tax loopholes, and why a green pool in Washington might be the perfect metaphor for modern politics.

Also: Lawn Boy nostalgia, basement floods, technical difficulties, and an FBI investigation that definitely isn’t looking for Jacob. Probably.

Politics, sarcasm, and rural common sense—welcome to Banana Republican.

Tonight on Three Rural White Guys, Kellen and Jacob tackle a question that seems increasingly difficult in modern America:

What happens when people stop arguing about politics and start arguing about reality itself?

The conversation begins with renewed hostilities involving Iran, rising energy costs, and the latest inflation report. From there, the discussion turns to one of the stranger stories of the week: Donald Trump's claim that the United States has been conducting a secret operation involving oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.

But the episode quickly expands beyond foreign policy.

The guys examine the reaction to Trump's appearance at Madison Square Garden, the growing tendency of political tribes to reject evidence that conflicts with their preferred narrative, and the increasingly blurred line between misinformation, propaganda, and simple partisan loyalty.

They also discuss Trump's contentious Meet the Press interview, election conspiracy claims, AI-generated misinformation, public trust in institutions, and whether Americans still share a common understanding of basic facts.

If citizens can no longer agree on what is actually happening, what does that mean for democracy, accountability, and the future of public life?

Something very strange happened in Iowa’s midterm primary: Democrats showed up.

Not “Iowa is magically blue now” showed up. Not “run the table in November” showed up. But in a state where rural Democrats have spent years feeling like lonely little blue dots in a red sea, the numbers told a different story.

Kellen brings the spreadsheet, Mike brings the bottle-opener trauma, and Jacob helps keep the whole thing from turning into a full political science hostage situation. The guys break down Iowa’s historic Democratic primary turnout, why 38% matters, what it says about rural political energy, and why visible participation might be one of the most underrated forces in politics.

Then things get weird.

We get into Rob Sand, the Republican gubernatorial primary, Trump’s golden boy falling short, the very strange rise of Zach Lahn, Koch-world politics, corporate ag, cancer, water, and the general feeling that Iowa politics may have wandered into the Brawndo section of the grocery store.

This one is about data, belonging, rural Democrats realizing they are not alone, and the possibility that all those little blue dots may add up to something bigger than people think.