Trump rallies thousands in Bozeman in support of GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy

BOZEMAN — Former President Donald Trump stumped for both himself and Montana’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy for more than an hour and half Friday night, telling a crowd of mostly ardent supporters that if Republicans don’t retake the White House and Democrat Jon Tester’s Senate seat there will be “no country left.”

Trump’s visit was aimed more at boosting Sheehy in his tight race against the three-term incumbent Tester than garnering support for himself. Trump has won Montana with broad support in the last two presidential elections, and the Republican nominee for president said as much in the outset of his speech to a full house of around 8,000 people at Brick Breeden Fieldhouse at Montana State University.

“I gotta like Tim Sheehy a lot to be here,” Trump said, also commenting multiple times about how much driving and traveling he had to do Friday to get around Montana with his plane landing in Billings and him having a fundraiser south of Bozeman before he spoke.

The rally featured appearances by most of the Republican candidates for statewide and federal offices in Montana this year, including Superintendent of Public Instruction candidate Susie Hedalen, Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen, Montana GOP Chairperson Don Kaltschmidt, Attorney General Austin Knudsen, 1^st Congressional District Rep. Ryan Zinke, 2^nd Congressional District candidate Troy Downing, U.S. Sen Steve Daines and Gov. Greg Gianforte, who all urged the crowd to get out and support Sheehy and Trump this year for the good of the party’s political ideology.

A common refrain heard from speakers, attendees, and printed on numerous T-shirts was Trump’s message in the moments after he was shot by a would-be assassin on July 13 in Pennsylvania: “Fight, fight, fight!”

Sheehy made the rounds through the crowd gathered ahead of the rally throughout the day, greeting enthusiastic supporters who lined up to take pictures with him. Some had gotten to the site to line up at 6 a.m. for a rally that did not start until 12 hours later. He drew raucous applause when he was spotted by supporters inside and outside the rally.

The Montana Republicans who spoke before Sheehy and Trump kept up their ongoing attacks against Tester, new Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Kaltschmidt said Tester had “destroyed the Montana way of life” and called Montana “Trumptana”; they riffed on “woke” ideologies, railed against what they said was an “open border,” made quips about Walz’s National Guard service and retirement, his work as governor during the George Floyd riots in 2020, said Republicans’ energy policy if they win the White House and Senate would be to “drill, baby, drill,” and repeatedly mentioned transgender athletes – all common, but at times misleading, attacks in recent months on the Democrats.

“I’m going to welcome you to Jon Tester’s retirement party,” said Daines, the chairperson of the National Republican Senatorial Committee who picked Sheehy for the race as he tries to flip the Senate majority back to Republicans.

Daines again tied Tester to Harris, though the Montana Democrat has yet to endorse Harris for president, because he previously supported her nomination to the Senate, and attacked Tester for his support of Trump’s impeachment, saying Sheehy’s “got Trump’s back” and would fight for right-wing judges on the federal court bench and help him “build the wall” at the southern border.

“The nation is watching Montana; they are counting on us, eighty-eight days away, in this most consequential election,” Daines said. “If we are going to take this country back, we must elect President Trump and we must elect Tim Sheehy to support President Trump back in Washington.”

At what has so far been his highest-profile political appearance to date in Montana because of Trump’s presence, Sheehy painted Tester’s Senate votes as critical to stopping Trump’s policies when he was president, even as Tester has tried to distance himself from the Biden administration on topics including the border and energy this election cycle.

Sheehy said the path to winning back the Senate went directly through Montana and again leaned on his military career as a Navy SEAL and his business acumen in building Bridger Aerospace, a Bozeman-based aerial firefighting company, into a successful Montana business – neither of which Tester had done, he said. Sheehy said the nation was “at a crossroads,” and reiterated he entered politics and this particular race after the U.S. left Afghanistan.

“I said, ‘Enough is enough. I’m sick of this bullshit. We’ve got to save the country.’ And a couple of years later, here we are,” Sheehy said. “The reason I’m running for this seat, it’s very simple. When I understood the importance of this race, when I understood control of the United States Senate came down to this seat, it was clear that my new path to serve this country was in the U.S. Senate.”

He told the supporters that even if Trump wins the White House, not having a Republican Senate majority will hamstring his efforts.

“You need to deliver him a Senate by retiring Jon Tester,” Sheehy said.

Trump took the stage around 9:30 p.m. to a fully packed fieldhouse that had filled out throughout the earlier speakers; security was extremely tight to enter the rally.

While initially mentioning Sheehy, and later bringing him onstage and closing out with a Montana-specific speech, he mostly spoke about the presidential race for the bulk of his remarks.

“We’re gonna evict crazy Kamala and we’re going to get Joe Biden out of the White House,” Trump told the crowd before launching into a meandering speech that lasted more than an hour and a half, discussing Biden’s dropping out, his hopes Biden would re-enter the race, his assertion that he had the strongest economy and border security in U.S. history and would bring them back on “day one,” and attacking the LGBTQ community, press and Harris-Walz ticket.

Trump called the U.S. a “failing nation” and claimed the Biden-Harris administration was purposefully harming the country.

“I wish they’d make our country great, but they’re going to destroy our country,” Trump said. “You know it? They even know it; and they’re probably doing it on purpose.”

Trump also repeatedly mentioned what he still falsely says was a “rigged election” in 2020 and said the Republican National Committee was working at an effort to repeat those efforts this year.

He made xenophobic comments about migrants coming to the U.S. illegally, falsely said Harris was letting some “roam free” to assault, rape and murder Americans, and falsely claimed she would give undocumented immigrants all the benefits Americans enjoy.

“It’s going to be called a Trump mass deportation, because we have no choice. We have no choice. If Harris wins, a never-ending stream of illegal alien rapists,” Trump said.

He also made snide comments about Tester’s appearance, chided his support for the Inflation Reduction Act, which has brought hundreds of millions of dollars to Montana, and called Tester a “big slob.”

Trump brought Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, a former physician to the president, on stage to air his animus for Tester six years after Tester helped tank Trump’s effort to put Jackson in as the Secretary of Veterans Affairs in 2018 by bringing to light complaints Jackson had overprescribed certain medications and was drinking on the job.

“This man tried to destroy me. He tried to destroy my family. I’ve been waiting for six years to get back here for this night, to be with this man right here, to come after (Tester),” Jackson said, calling Tester a “Swamp hippopotamus.”

Trump went back to Sheehy more than an hour into his speech, bringing him onstage and praising his military career, business, and calling him “handsome.”

“Tim Sheehy, you’ve got to vote for him,” Trump told the crowd.

Sheehy said he had been growing angry watching U.S. forces die in Afghanistan before Trump took office but his support for Trump was solidified when he ordered the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in 2020 in Iraq.

“You’re the guy that dropped the bomb on that son-of-a-bitch Soleimani, and I’ll always have your back for that,” Sheehy said.

To round out his speech, Trump gave shoutouts to the Montana Republicans who had helped introduce him, said he would deport “pro-Hamas radicals,” demolish drug cartels, restore peace between Ukraine and Russia, stop taxes on Social Security and tipping, cut federal funding for universities, and build an Iron Dome over the entire U.S. like the one protecting Israel from missile attacks.

“I think we’re going to have the greatest election victory in the history of our country,” Trump said.

The Tester campaign took out a full-page ad Friday in the Bozeman Daily Chronicle touting the newly launched “Republicans for Tester” and criticizing Sheehy’s health care plan, which Tester says would shutter four-dozen rural hospitals across the state. In 2018, Trump visited Montana four times in support of Matt Rosendale, who lost to Tester that year.

“Jon Tester is proud of the work that he did with President Trump to deliver for Montana’s veterans, crack down on waste and fraud in the federal government, and help secure the southern border,” campaign spokesperson Harry Child said in a statement Saturday morning. “Jon’s strong record is why earlier this week, Montana Republicans from across the state – from elected officials to business owners to Trump voters – endorsed Jon in his campaign for Senate.”

This story was initially published by the Daily Montanan, a nonprofit news organization and part of the States Newsroom network, covering state issues. Read more at dailymontanan.com.

This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: Trump rallies Bozeman crowd in support of GOP Senate candidate Sheehy