During a campaign rally in Montana on Friday night, former President Trump criticized Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.), who is facing a tough re-election campaign this fall, criticizing his record in Congress on issues such as the southern U.S. border and calling him a “far-left lunatic.”
“For years, Tester has presented himself as a moderate in Montana. [President] Biden, [Vice President] Harris and [Sens.] “Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren,” Trump told a crowd of supporters in Bozeman, Montana.
Trump claimed Tester voted for “mass amnesty” while opposing building a wall along the southern US border and the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which would require asylum seekers to remain in Mexico until their claims are accepted.
The former president also alleged that Tester supported legislation that would speed up inflation and suggested the Montana Democrat voted against the Keystone XL pipeline.
Trump also commented on Tester’s appearance, saying, “He has the biggest belly I’ve ever seen.”
Trump was campaigning in Montana with less than 100 days until the November election as Republicans seek to unseat Tester, who is seeking a fourth term. Tester has become Republicans’ top target because he is one of two Democratic senators representing a state that Trump won handily in 2020 and is seeking reelection.
But it’s also particularly personal for Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the Senate Republican Campaign Chairman, who is hoping another Republican from his home state will join him in the Senate.
Republican Senate candidate Tim Sheehy is set to face Tester in November, and both Sheehy and Daines have attended Trump rallies.
Tester is gearing up for a tough re-election campaign, running ads focused on issues such as the border while also seeking to distance himself from Biden and Harris.
“When Montanans see a problem, we take action. Jon Tester worked with Republicans to close the border, target fentanyl traffickers, and add hundreds of new Border Patrol agents.” As the narrator in his advert from earlier this year says:“And he fought to stop President Biden from allowing migrants to remain in the United States instead of in Mexico.”
Tester has pressed Biden to step up efforts at the U.S. southern border, writing in a February letter to the president that he “respectfully urges you to use all remaining tools to increase border security to the extent executive action is available.”
The Montana Democrat has a tenuous stance on the border. He supported a bill this year to detain immigrants who enter the country illegally and commit certain crimes. In 2019, Tester In an interview with WBUR“There are some places where a wall makes sense,” he said, but “building a wall from sea to shining sea is not the right direction.”
He also had a tense exchange with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas earlier this year, in which he said, “The fact is, the border needs to be fixed. We as Congress need to act, the administration needs to act, and you need to act.”
Daines voted with his party for Biden’s massive health care and climate change bills in 2022, but he also supported an amendment removed from the COVID-19 relief bill in 2021 that would have allowed Congress to approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Blaming the Democrats He supported the pipeline, a position he reversed when he voted for the relief package without amendments.
Both Daines and Sheehy spoke at Trump’s rally in Bozeman.
Sheehy called Tester “someone who has always supported the Biden-Harris agenda when it counted” and argued that “Jon Tester didn’t have the courage to say, ‘I’m going to vote against these terrible policies that are harmful to the people of Montanan.'”
“The American people are watching Montana. They are counting on us in this crucial election, 88 days away,” Daines told attendees. “To get our country back, we must elect President Trump. And we must elect Tim Sheehy to come back to Washington and support President Trump.”
A Montana poll compiled by Decision Desk HQ has Sheehy ahead of Tester, 49 percent to 45 percent. The nonpartisan election forecasting site Cook Political Report rates the seat as a “50-50” split.
