Former President Trump criticized Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who is facing a tight reelection bid this fall, and his record in Congress on issues like the U.S. southern border and called him a “radical left lunatic” while campaigning in Montana on Friday night.
“For years, Tester has been telling Montana that he's a moderate while he votes with [President] Biden, [Vice President] Harris and [Sens.] Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren,” Trump told a large crowd of supporters in Bozeman, Mont.
Trump claimed that Tester had voted for “mass amnesty” while voting against building a wall along the U.S. southern border and the “Remain in Mexico” policy that requires migrants seeking asylum to stay in Mexico as they wait for their cases to be taken up.
The former president also claimed that Tester had supported legislation that added to inflation and suggested that the Montana Democrat had voted against the Keystone XL Pipeline.
Trump also made mention of Tester’s physical appearance, saying “he's got the biggest stomach I have ever seen.”
Trump was campaigning in Montana just less than 100 days out from the November election as Republicans look to unseat Tester, who’s vying for a fourth term. He’s a top target for the GOP given Tester is one of two Senate Democrats representing states that Trump handily won in 2020 and who are looking for reelection.
But it’s also particularly personal to Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), chairman of the Senate GOP campaign arm, who’s looking to see another Republican from his home state join him in the upper chamber.
Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy is running against Tester in November, and both Sheehy and Daines made appearances at Trump’s rally.
Gearing up for a competitive reelection bid, Tester has run ads leaning into issues like the border while also looking to keep Biden and Harris at arm’s length.
“When Montanans see a problem, we get to work. Jon Tester worked with Republicans fighting to shut down the border, target fentanyl traffickers, and add hundreds of new Border Patrol agents,” a narrator in one of his ads earlier this year says. “And he fought to stop President Biden from letting migrants stay in America instead of remain in Mexico.”
Tester has put pressure on Biden to do more at the U.S. southern border, writing in a letter to the president in February, “I respectfully urge you to use all of the remaining tools at your disposal to strengthen border security where executive action is possible.”
The Montana Democrat’s position on the border is nuanced. He supported legislation this year that would detain immigrants who have illegally immigrated into the country and have committed certain crimes. In 2019, Tester suggested in an interview with WBUR that while “there are some places where a wall does make sense,” “a wall from sea to shining sea is not the right direction to go.”
He also had a tense exchange with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas earlier this year, saying, “The fact is the border needs to be fixed, and we need to step up as Congress, the administration needs to step up, you need to step up.”
He voted alongside his party on Biden’s major health care and climate package in 2022 but he also supported an amendment that later got stripped from a COVID-19 relief package back in 2021 that would have allowed the Keystone XL pipeline to be greenlit by Congress. Daines accused Democrats in support of the pipeline of “flip-flopping” their support when they voted for the relief package without the amendment.
Both Daines and Sheehy spoke at Trump’s rally in Bozeman.
Sheehy called Tester a “rubber stamp for the Biden-Harris agenda every single time it matters” and claimed that “Jon Tester couldn't find the courage to say, ‘I'm going to vote against these terrible policies that are bad for Montanans.’”
“The nation is watching Montana. They are counting on us 88 days away in this most consequential election,” Daines told attendees. “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.”
An aggregate of Montana surveys compiled by Decision Desk HQ shows Sheehy outpacing Tester 49 percent to 45 percent. The nonpartisan election handicapper Cook Political Report rates the seat as a “toss-up.”
