'He conned me': Pennsylvania farmer who voted for Trump in 2016 to speak at DNC

In 2016, Rick Telesz believed Mr Trump would ‘look after the working man’ and ‘drain the swamp’ but now says the president's trade war with China could finish his family farm

A Pennsylvania dairy and soybean farmer who voted for Donald Trump in 2016 will be speaking on behalf of Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden at the party's convention later this week.

Rick Telesz, a registered Democrat who voted for Mr Trump in 2016 because he believed the president would "look after the working man" and "drain the swamp," now regrets that vote and has done a 180-degree turn.

"He's a hell of a salesman. And a tremendous con man. He conned me," Mr Telesz told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Mr Trump's trade war with China has threatened to put Mr Telesz' third-generation family farming operation out of business, he told the Gazette.

Keeping up with the agricultural giants to produce soybean and dairy requires farmers to earn profits year over year so they can invest in new, ever-improving equipment.

That kind of money isn't flowing in right now, Mr Telesz said.

“Is farming going to disappear tomorrow? No,” he told the Gazette. “But if these trends continue, I could very possibly be the last generation on this family farm. ... It will disappear. It cannot sustain.”

Mr Telesz, who voted for Barack Obama twice, in 2008 and 2012, has shared his displeasure with the media over the Trump administration's tariff policies several times over the last couple years.

"When you start taking a 20 percent cut, it can be very stressful. It is stressful," Mr Telesz told a local ABC News affiliate in 2019.

Mr Telesz considered the Trump administration's subsequent bailout subsidies to farmers a "Band-Aid."

"I would rather have a free and open market," Mr Telesz said.

The Pennsylvania farmer did not expressly blame Mr Trump for the coronavirus crisis, but he has ripped him for not taking it seriously in its early stages.

"You can't blame anyone for the virus," he told New Castle News, a small daily paper in the western part of the Keystone State.

But Mr Trump was "totally incompetent in not informing the public earlier of what was coming," Mr Telesz said.

Mr Telesz is one of several private citizens scheduled to speak at the DNC this week.

Those slated for appearances include a teacher from Milwaukee, a cancer survivor from Nevada who will tout the 2010 health care law known as Obamacare, and a director for a nonprofit group catering to gun violence survivors in Indiana.