From The Daily Beast:
Tim Sheehy, the Navy SEAL running to unseat Democratic Montana Sen. Jon Tester, has repeatedly told voters he was “discharged” from the military for medical reasons, owing to wounds sustained in service.
But the Republican’s own autobiography, published just last year, says otherwise; he wrote that he became disillusioned with military personnel policies and left of his own accord after being injured in a training accident.
“This line of inquiry is disgusting,” Sheehy’s campaign said in a statement, claiming there was no inconsistency.
But the discrepancy is the latest to dog Sheehy, 38, who has described himself as a “war hero” on the campaign trail.
Audio obtained by The Daily Beast reveals that in February, at a Bozeman Public Library event to promote his autobiography, Sheehy said: “After I got wounded the final time, I got discharged.”
In March, he told a podcast host he “proudly served multiple tours overseas,” including in Iraq and Afghanistan, and “got wounded and injured a handful of times, so eventually was medically discharged from the military.”
And in a November episode of the First Class Fatherhood podcast, Sheehy said: “So finally, they said, ‘Hey, you’re at the end of the road, you know, you’ve got shrapnel in you, you’ve got a bullet in you, you’ve had a head injury, you know, you’re out of here.’”
This isn’t the first time Sheehy’s been busted for lying about his background:
Tim Sheehy, a charismatic former Navy SEAL who is the Republican candidate in a U.S. Senate race in Montana that could determine control of the chamber, has cited a gunshot wound he received in combat that he said left a bullet in his right arm as evidence of his toughness.
“I got thick skin — though it’s not thick enough. I have a bullet stuck in this arm still from Afghanistan,” Sheehy said in a video of a December campaign event posted on social media, pointing to his right forearm.
It was one of several inconsistent accounts Sheehy has shared about being shot while deployed. And in October 2015, more than a year after he left active duty, he told a different story.
After a family visit to Montana’s Glacier National Park, he told a National Park Service ranger that he accidentally shot himself in the right arm that day when his Colt .45 revolver fell and discharged while he was loading his vehicle in the park, according to a record of the episode filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Montana.
The self-inflicted gunshot left a bullet lodged in Sheehy’s right forearm, according to the written description accompanying the federal citation that the ranger, a federal law enforcement officer, gave Sheehy for illegally discharging his weapon in a national park. The citation said the description was based on Sheehy’s telling of events.
Asked this week about the citation, which has not been previously reported, Sheehy told The Washington Post that the statement he gave the ranger was a lie. He said he made up the story about the gun going off to protect himself and his former platoonmates from facing a potential military investigation into an old bullet wound that he said he got in Afghanistan in 2012. He said he did not know for certain whether the wound was the result of friendly fire or from enemy ammunition, and said he never reported the incident to his superiors.
Here’s some more incidents of this clown lying about who he is:
Since launching his campaign to unseat vulnerable Sen. Jon Tester (D) last year, Sheehy has described his “rural” childhood on multiple occasions—at a fundraiser for Montana rodeo, in multiple podcast and radio hits, as well as in an interview with Western Ag Reporter.
The truth, however, is that Sheehy’s home turf is quintessential Minnesota suburbia—a place where pavement dominates pasture.
The Republican candidate grew up in a multi-million-dollar lake house in Shoreview, Minnesota, a quiet Twin Cities suburb just north of St. Paul with a population of roughly 27,000. Sheehy’s campaign confirmed to the Montana Free Press in December that he grew up in the town.
According to a 1990 deed, Sheehy’s childhood home on Turtle Lake is 13 miles from the Minnesota State Capitol, 13 miles from the home of the Minnesota Vikings at U.S. Bank Stadium, and just over 20 miles from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and the Mall of America.
The property sits just three miles from a Trader Joe’s market—much closer than the nearest Fleet Farm, a fishing, hunting, and farm supply store popular in the state.
And Sheehy was educated 16 miles away at St. Paul Academy, one of the Twin Cities’ elite private high schools, which counts the writer F. Scott Fitzgerald as an alumnus.
Montana businessman Tim Sheehy built his aerial firefighting company, Bridger Aerospace, on certain scientific realities — namely that global climate change is real and driving more extreme wildfires. He even touted it as a leader in the fight against planet-warming emissions.
But when it came time to campaign for the U.S. Senate, the GOP hopeful quickly embraced partisan talking points on climate, repeatedly railing against what he calls the “climate cult” and “radical environmentalists,” while blaming the growing wildfire threat exclusively on forest mismanagement.
And while the Trump-endorsed MAGA conservative flipped his script on climate, his company continues to embrace climate and wildfire science — at least in public filings.
In its latest annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission, filed in March, Bridger Aerospace writes that “we believe that rising global temperatures have been, and in the future are expected to be, one factor contributing to increasing rates and severity of wildfires.” It cites climate research, including an Environmental Protection Agency website that notes “multiple studies have found that climate change has already led to an increase in wildfire season length, wildfire frequency, and burned area.” And it warns shareholders and potential investors that climate change poses numerous risks to the company.
Montana GOP Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy has been promoting his new book about aerial firefighting while on the campaign trail — and often misrepresenting who benefits from the book’s proceeds.
Sheehy, a decorated former Navy SEAL and millionaire businessman, is vying for the Republican nomination to take on incumbent Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) in November. He is the founder of Bridger Aerospace, a Bozeman-based aerial firefighting company, and the author of “Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting,” which came out Dec. 12.
“Mudslingers” is “part narrative nonfiction, part memoir” and tells a “riveting account of [Sheehy]’s journey from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq to the front lines of a different but no less important battle on the home front — the war against the escalating threat of wildfire,” according to publisher Permuted Press.
While on the campaign trail, both before and after the book’s release, Sheehy has repeatedly said that all of its proceeds benefit “fallen aerial firefighters and their families.”
What Sheehy doesn’t mention, but which the publisher clearly notes on the book’s landing page, is that author proceeds go to both the Wildland Firefighter Foundation, which provides “immediate and long-term assistance to fallen & injured wildland firefighters and their families,” and the United Aerial Firefighters Association, an industry trade group that Sheehy co-founded early last year. The UAFA has spent tens of thousands of dollars lobbying Congress, including on legislation and policies that would benefit Sheehy’s company.
Tim Sheehy, a front-runner for the Republican Senate nomination in Montana, sold off thousands of dollars’ worth of stock in companies with reported ties to the Chinese Communist Party before launching a campaign that, like those of many other Republicans, has been full of “tough on China” rhetoric.
Republicans recruited Sheehy, a millionaire businessman and decorated former Navy SEAL, to run against longtime Democratic incumbent Jon Tester. Sheehy has spent months warning that China is a top threat to U.S. national security, and painting his opponent as a “weak-on-China career politician.”
In one TV campaign ad, Sheehy declared that “politicians like Jon Tester talk tough on China. I’ve actually done something about the threats we face.” In another ad, featuring dramatic music and footage of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Sheehy warns that “China is building a fierce military.”
“As your senator, I will take on foreign corporations and countries like China that rip us off and drive our prices down,” he says in yet another campaign ad.
In TV and radio interviews, Sheehy has taken an increasingly hard-line stance, saying that China is making a “very concerted effort to undermine the United States of America,” and that “we need to be ready for conflict with China.” On the issues page of his campaign website, Sheehy writes: “The politicians in Washington are more concerned with their political careers than securing America’s future. They’ve empowered our adversaries like China, opened our borders, shut down American energy production, and created economic uncertainty.”
Sheehy’s messaging on China is unsurprising. Since launching his Senate bid in June, he has toed the party line on seemingly every major issue — even abandoning previously held views about the need to confront global climate change. But his posture on China is complicated by the fact that, as a wealthy businessman — his net worth is between $74 million and $260 million, according to Business Insider — Sheehy invested in a Chinese technology corporation and several companies with ties to the Chinese Communist Party, including some that the U.S. has identified as threats to national security.
And he’s a liar when it comes to the issues:
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Tim Sheehy refused to say last month if he would support the restoration of federal abortion rights.
Sheehy is running in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate in Montana. If he wins the nomination, he’ll challenge Democratic incumbent Sen. Jon Tester in the general election.
In a video shared exclusively with the American Journal News, a voter can be seen approaching Sheehy at a public event and asking if he would vote to reinstate Roe v. Wade. Sheehy initially acknowledges the voter before turning his back to them when the question is asked. The voter repeats the question two more times but Sheehy does not respond.
Sheehy has expressed anti-abortion views in the past. In an April 2023 radio interview, he compared abortion to murder.
“It’s really frustrating how, you know, we have one party in this country that seems to be bent on murdering our unborn children and taking that, taking that tack, you know, in a very militant way,” Sheehy said.
Sheehy has been endorsed by the prominent anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. The group has pledged to only back candidates who support a national abortion ban.
Yeah, I can understand why that’s an issue he can’t be honest about:
Abortion rights proponents in Montana have proposed a constitutional amendment that would bar the government from denying the right to abortion before viability or when it’s necessary to protect the life or health of the pregnant person. After a legal battle over the ballot language, the Montana Supreme Court in April wrote its version of the language that would appear on the ballot if supporters gather more than 60,000 signatures by June 21. Abortion is legal until viability in Montana, under a 1999 Montana Supreme Court opinion.
There are currently two open seats on the Montana State Supreme Court that are hotly contested, but what does that power does that position hold?
The Supreme Court is meant to be a group of people that oversees legislation, ballot measures and day to day operation of this state to ensure that it's held to its constitutional code. It's the legal oversight.
There are seven members on the bench at a time and for the most part, all of the current justices are from Montana. They've attended law school, and they have pretty extensive resumes when it comes to prior experience.
However, what's especially important to note is that the current Constitution of the State of Montana, which was adopted in 1972 and off of which all of the justices base their legal interpretation, outlines the requirements for Montana Supreme Court Justices to hold office.
So will the real Tim Sheehy please stand up?
One convoluted narrative, six months out from an election, is unlikely to decide the race. But it has added a wrinkle to a larger question facing voters: Which of these candidates can I trust?
Democrats have jumped on the incident. VoteVets, a progressive group focused on veterans issues, has spent $200,000 on advertisements questioning Mr. Sheehy’s honesty, tapping Montana veterans to share their thoughts on him with other voters.
“Veterans, when they run for office, you say you’re a veteran, because automatically people know this guy has honor, he has integrity,” said Jonas Rides at the Door, a Missoula Democrat and Marine Corps veteran who works with VoteVets. “But then you can tarnish that when you start lying.”
Some supporters of Mr. Tester said the gunshot incident confirmed their suspicions about Mr. Sheehy’s character. “I think it’s bizarre,” said Henry Elsen, 68, of Whitefish. “Why couldn’t he just tell the truth?”
Republicans, and those still making up their minds about which candidate to support, said it was not an important part of their calculus.
“It’s a side distraction,” said Bob Campbell, a Republican city councilman in Missoula who said he was undecided in the Senate race.
But don’t worry, folks. Montana Democrats are already defining who the real Tim Sheehy is:
Sheehy, an ex-Navy SEAL and Minnesota native, holds up his Little Belt Cattle Co., founded in 2020 in central Montana, as a success amid profound challenges in agriculture. Democrats hope voters will instead view it as a threat in a state settled and developed through federal homesteading programs dating back to the 1800s.
More recently, Montana has seen a rush of deep-pocketed outsiders buying up land. Democrats are trying to tie Sheehy to the trend — another outsider eager to capitalize on how the popular television series “Yellowstone” has romanticized Mountain West living. Little Belt, which raises and sells cattle and beef, encompasses land once divided among three smaller ranches in prime elk-hunting country. It only allows private hunting on its grounds.
“Super wealthy folks are buying huge tracts of land and turning Montana and other Western states into a playground for the rich,” Noah Marion, political and state policy director for Wild Montana Action Fund, a group that plans to support Tester this year but in the past has also backed Republicans and independents, told NBC News.
By the way, this is just pathetic:
Former President Donald Trump mocked Sen. Jon Tester’s weight during a private event over the weekend, saying the Montana Democrat “looks pregnant to me.”
“Have you ever seen this guy? He doesn’t look like a fat guy, except that his stomach is out,” Trump said, holding his hands out in front of him during a fundraiser Saturday for Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) at Mar-A-Lago, according to video of the event obtained by POLITICO.
Tester’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump has a long history of disparaging his political opponents, especially women, over their looks. In the video, he immediately follows his comments by declaring that he doesn’t “talk about things like that” and never talks “about looks for a man or for a woman.”
Health, Democracy and Freedom are on the ballot and we need to get ready to keep Tester in the Senate and protect abortion rights in Montana. Click below to donate and get involved with Tester’s re-election campaign and the Montana Democratic Party: