Interview with Tim Sheehy: from Navy Seal to Senator

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Hi, everybody.

It's Victor Hansen on the Victor Davis Hansen podcast, and our regular co-host,

Jack Fowler and Sammy Wink, aren't with me today.

And we've had this series where I just do solo interviews.

I'm very excited today because

we're going to talk with Tim Sheehee, and he is the Republican challenger for the John Tester Senate seat in Montana.

He's an ex-Navy SEAL.

I'm going to talk to him about his bio just very briefly, but this is very, very important because if Donald Trump should win, he's not going to be able to do anything unless he takes the Senate.

And there's some key Senate races in Arizona and West Virginia and other places, but especially in Montana that might make the difference.

So I just urge everybody to listen carefully to Tim and support his candidacy.

And we're ready to go, Tim.

It's a great honor.

Why don't you just tell me a little bit about your background?

You've been a Navy SEAL.

You've been a very successful entrepreneur.

What have you been doing in Montana, like just say the last five years?

What brought you to Montana?

What's your

background?

You were in the Navy SEALs for how long, Tim?

Well, well, first of all, thanks, Victor, for the time.

I've been a long time admirer of your work.

And America is very fortunate to have

wise

voices of clarity like yours out there, because

one of my favorite things about your voice is

the word I just used, clarity.

It's not even partisan.

And I don't even think the issues of my election and in politics today, It's not partisan anymore.

It's not about Republican and Democrats.

It's about basic common sense.

It's about basic American values that these things didn't used to be political.

No,

two

genders did,

yeah, civilization versus chaos.

Yeah, I mean, two genders hasn't been political for six to five million years, as far as I understand.

The dinosaurs, and you know, uh, the basic you know, cops are good, criminals are bad, you know, borders exist.

And so, anyways, I want to thank you for that.

Um, I've been a longtime listener, follower, reader, and love your work.

So, um, but yes, to your questions, uh, to your questions about about me.

So

I was a Navy SEAL officer.

Met my wife in the military.

We both went to the U.S.

Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

We met there.

She became a Marine Corps officer, also a combat vet of Afghanistan.

I became a Navy SEAL officer.

And

we proudly served multiple tours overseas, both of us, Iraq, Afghanistan, South America, anti-drug work, all over the world.

I got wounded and injured a handful of times, so eventually was medically discharged from the military and

loved my crew in the military.

I loved leading SEALs, loved leading Americans, frankly, because a lot of people sometimes have some pretty common misconceptions about the SEALs or special ops is that we're always a tiny team of us out there working only with

our own team, which sometimes is true.

Sometimes there is four, six, eight, 10, 12 of you on your own.

But the vast majority of the time, you're operating with other branches of the military and with other militaries.

I didn't know about you.

I was with the other military.

Yeah, I didn't

know about it, but I didn't know it was that extensive.

I mean, probably 90% of the missions I went on, I went over 200 missions.

I had members of the army with me integrated in my team.

Sometimes other countries, you know, whether it was Australian SAS, British SAS, or Allied host nation forces from, if we were in Central and South America, we'd always have a member of the host nation military with us on our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We'd have members of the Iraqi or Afghani special operations embedded with us.

But, anyways, it was a fantastic time.

I intended to do a career in the military.

That was my vision for my life.

And I think, as we all know,

as we get older, you know, what we thought our life would look like when we were 18 is usually not at all what our life does look like now.

And me now at 38,

absolutely, I thought I'd still be in uniform commanding a large organization in the military.

And, you know, fate intervened.

God intervened, you know, and

when I was injured, the final time I got wounded, you know, shrapnel, IEDs, bullet, which was hit one time as well.

And finally, when it was over, my wife and I had a kind of an unexpected crossroads in our life.

And as two military people who uh had never any business experience, no finance experience, nothing, we said, hey, you know, we're going to start a business as a couple of 28-year-old, you know, one wounded, one that who've never done anything other than fight wars, we're going to, we're going to start a business.

That's what we're going to do.

And of course, looking back, in fact, my wife and I were just, you know, we're farmers and ranchers.

We were walking our fence line last night.

And we talked about this.

We said, man, if we talked to our 28-year-old selves today and said, hey, I'm going to get out of the military tomorrow.

And with all the little savings I have, I'm going to pour it into a business.

And I've never run a business before.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

We'd probably give ourselves the advice that, you know, that's probably not a good idea.

Yeah.

You should probably get a job, probably get something where, you know, you can have stable income.

We had our first child at that time.

But, you know, idealistic, you know, I wanted to start a business and I wanted to start a business around a capability we'd used overseas.

I grew up, I was a pilot as a kid.

My Navy, my neighbor growing up was a Navy pilot, taught me how to fly.

As a young child, he was a Korean War Navy pilot and I loved aviation and went to the naval academy to be a naval aviator you know i won't want to be top gun in the 90s um

but uh you know the wars were were raging and and of course these were door-to-door wars in an ancient land um these were ground wars and for me i felt uh it was a selfish desire to fly um the nation did not need flyers they needed ground pounders and um i'll never forget my plebe year which is what you call a freshman at the naval academy and we could talk all about the naval academy the service academies and what was what year happened yeah Could I ask just briefly, what year were you there?

Were you at?

So that was,

yep, my first year was 2004, fall of 2004, graduated in spring of 2008.

And

I was a visiting professor there from 2003

to 3 as a chifron professor in the history department.

Yep, I remember hearing that.

I missed you briefly, but,

you know, obviously knew of your presence there.

And obviously I was a lowly plebe, so you wouldn't have known who I was.

But, you know,

I think another time or maybe today, I'd love to talk about the service academies and what just terribleness has happened there in the last year.

Yeah, I'm very worried.

I'm very worried about them.

I was worried about that 20 years, but I'm much more worried.

But anyway, so you came, you went into business and you had spectacular success.

Why don't you just tell us

how did you do that so quickly?

Well, I mean, honestly,

I had a great team, had amazing mentors, my brother, my older brother, Matt Sheehee, my father, Richard Sheehee, both,

you know, my mother, my wife.

I mean, it's always a team effort.

But, you know, what happened really was, again, I grew up as a pilot and went into the SEALs.

And during my deployments as a SEAL, you know, we used aerial surveillance, so specialized aircraft with sensors on them, infrared sensors, ground-penetrating radar, electro-optic sensors.

And these aircraft provided us a wealth of information.

that was incredibly powerful for us on the battlefield.

And a lot of folks don't know this, but one one of the largest killers of American troops throughout the 20th century has been ourselves, our own air, our own air support, bombs being dropped in the wrong spot, strafing runs in the wrong spot.

Coordinating fast-moving aircraft with chaotic ground battles is exceedingly difficult.

And sometimes it can be just as dangerous for

the friendly forces as the enemy.

And one thing we had, I will never say perfected, but one thing we had gotten very good at as a special operations task force during the Iraq and Afghan campaigns was

the air ground task force, the very close integration of the aircraft with the ground team so we could conduct precision surveillance and precision strikes as safely and effectively as possible.

And as a pilot, I had a bit of, you know, obviously knowledge of how things worked in the air.

And obviously as a ground team leader, back-to-back-to-back deployments,

I really became engaged in how can we do this better?

What technologies exist?

And I was very proud of a number of missions where I'd used hostage rescue missions, counter-terrorism missions where I'd used aircraft to great effect.

And I thought to myself, specifically on one mission, it was a hostage rescue mission in northeastern Afghanistan, where the only way we were able to find this hostage was through specialized air gathering.

I said, man, if we could find out how to use some of this stuff for other

things besides just war, there could be tremendous benefits to the American people here.

And to be honest, at the time, it was the southern border.

You know, that was the Obama years, and we were hearing about the border crisis crisis then.

And I said, this would be a very cheap, expeditious way to help secure the border without having to build, of course, now, you know, the wall.

These aircraft have been doing amazing things for us in this desert.

Why aren't we applying it to our own desert and protecting our own people with it?

So, you know, I didn't expect to get out, but eventually I did and decided, as I said, you know, we poured all of our money into, you know, our farm and ranch here, which we live on.

We've grown over the years, but also our first aircraft, those government surplus aircraft.

We invented a very rudimentary sensor system.

And the mission was to secure the southern border.

This is 2014 when I got out, 2015, and very quickly realized, and I had some, we developed a very basic infrared camera system.

My co-founder and I also a veteran, and we installed it into an aircraft that we bought government surplus.

And I mean, it was all, we were all on black.

I mean, 100%.

cash in the business at risk, no backup plan, my VA disability from being injured.

And that was it.

And we went to the southern border time after time.

And finally, one of these border patrol guys, who also had been a former special operations guy, said, hey, you realize there's not really a desire to secure the border by this administration.

There's not a lot of funding coming this way.

I mean, your technology is great and very helpful, but I don't see a path for you here.

And I just want to be straight with you so you don't waste any more time down here.

And for me, of course, that was.

I was like, well, that's it.

I mean, hang up, hang up the cleats.

We're done.

I mean, I got to go get a new job now.

And right around that time we'd also been you know flight testing up here in montana the local forest service representative had seen our aircraft seen our test flights and said hey you know have you ever thought of flying wildfires and you know it occurred to me i'd seen but i didn't know much about it and i said listen if you're paying i'm flying because uh you know i i'm pretty much broke you show the way and and and we did a couple of demo flights for him and i very quickly realized that how our infrared imaging could empower wildland firefighting.

And of course, this week in Texas, we've seen the most, you know, one of the most destructive fires in American history, just reap havoc on the cattle industry.

And our aircraft actually was one of the very first aircraft to detect that fire and has been assisting since the beginning.

Our aircraft have been there since the beginning.

And there should have been a much more aggressive response.

I'll say that right away, but that's a whole nother hour-long conversation about our wildfire apparatus.

But we very quickly applied our military model of close air support.

to the wildland fire crisis in America.

And I'm proud to say, you know, we've created about 450 jobs in the last nine and a half years from scratch, operate on four continents.

We've created multiple subsidiaries and spin-offs that have focused on infrared technology, video analytics, obviously aerial firefighting.

I personally fly our big water bombers that drop water on wildfires.

And

along the way, we've created a lot of jobs, sold one company to a strategic, took one public on the NASDAQ.

and have just grown to absolutely love business.

And I'll tell you, Victor, as you know better than I,

the true magic of America has never been our government or our military.

The magic of America is the entrepreneurial spirit.

I mean, that's what our entire founding documents were based around: the individual right to self-determination and the potential of every single person to lead their own life and create their own greatness.

And entrepreneurship is the purest form of that in America.

And I guess I never really understood that until I walked that path myself.

So let me ask you a question.

So before we get into the Montana politics, we have to get into, but so

you guys, did you buy things like C-130s or do you have a team that just you spot the fires and then do you outsource it to the fire service?

Or do you actually have guys that you use as contractors to put out the fire?

So we are those contractors.

So a lot of folks don't realize in the United States, but every airplane, almost every airplane, probably 98 to 99% of aircraft, telecompass airplanes you see over a fire are privately owned and operated.

Those are contractor aircraft.

It's not the government flying those.

That's not the fireplace.

I had no idea.

I didn't know it was that large percentage.

Yeah, almost every single one.

Occasionally, the only ones that are government-owned and operated, in fact, they're not even government-owned operated.

Occasionally, there's government pilots flying them, but those are the lead planes, the small planes that might lead through and scout a fire.

But most.

Most aircraft that scout fires, like ours, the air attack, the surveillance aircraft, are private contracted aircraft.

And every single water bomber you see is a contracted aircraft.

So all of that.

So

what's the airplane of choice?

Are there just different

depending on the job?

Or what kind of planes do you fly?

So what we fly is the CL-415 EAF.

It's the only purpose-built firefighting plane in the world.

It's a super scooper.

It comes in and scoops the sand off reservoirs.

Yes.

And I fly them myself.

They're an amazing aircraft, incredibly robust.

We have the largest private mount fleet in the world.

I've watched that all.

I have a cabin up at Huntington Lake in California, and the Aspen fire came within 300, 400 yards of burning it.

And I just sat all day and watched those scoopers come into Huntington Lake, pick up water.

And they were amazing pilots.

They are.

And, you know, there's few more demanding aviation missions in the world than that.

I mean, you have to be an expert.

not just pilot.

Obviously, you're flying these big planes at very low altitude over mountains that are burning.

So you have to understand good stick and rudder aviation, which, to be honest, is a skill that's going away with autopilot and all these electronics.

A lot of pilots now don't have those fundamental pilot skills anymore.

But so that's skill set number one.

Skill set number two is, of course, understanding mountain flying and fire flying, knowing how to actually fight a fire from the air, which that's a whole nother skill set.

And then, of course, with scoopers, you have to be an expert boat driver.

When you're on the water, you're driving at 100 miles an hour.

You're basically a high-speed

racing boat.

And once you're on the water, you're a boat.

You have to know how to drive that effectively and safely.

So

it's an amazing mission.

I love doing it.

And

our company, Bridger Aerospace,

has been growing extremely rapidly.

We have an amazing team.

We operate all over the world.

And to your point, we spot the fires, we map them with our proprietary software mapping system.

We're trying to really, you know, the aerial firefighting and wildland firefighting apparatus of the United States is fairly antiquated.

You know, not a whole lot of it has evolved since the 70s.

And

what we've really tried to do is bring that military grade, close air support, close coordination, software analytics, predictive analytics, infrared imaging, and of course, with our water bombers, a close integrated task force where we can spot the fire, map it, and immediately launch an air response to arrest the growth of that fire and protect the communities.

And this is one of the

companies you founded and are thriving.

This is one that you still, you haven't sold it.

You still run it, don't you?

Absolutely.

Yep.

I'm the founder, CEO, and I love the business.

Again, I personally fly the aircraft and I love our mission.

I love the business.

And, you know, we had an infrared camera technology company that was part of Bridger.

We spun that out called AVT Ascent Vision Technologies.

That became a technology manufacturer.

And frankly, it grew quickly.

And we decided that the best future of that business was to be part of a larger strategic technology company because we simply couldn't take it to the next level.

And then, you know, know, we've kept Bridger and again, took it public.

And,

you know, we're one of the larger companies in Montana.

And it's a great business.

I love it.

Let me shift.

Thank you for that.

I think it's fascinating.

To Montana, you know,

I had a brother that went to the University of Montana, the creative writing program.

I used to go there a lot.

It seems to me it's a state

kind of, it's different than Idaho or Wyoming.

It seems, I would just in prep for this, I saw that almost 48%, or maybe it's 50%,

or maybe it's 51% of the state was not born in Montana.

And so is it, how does that demographic, is it becoming, I think everybody's curious, is it becoming redder, bluer, more purple, or is it just, it's just idiosyncratic when you have that many people that...

And they're coming for different reasons.

My experience with Californians are that the ones that leave tend to make red states redder.

And if they go to purple states like Colorado, they make them bluer.

But most of the people are leaving California are very conservative, which is a tragedy because we have to save the state.

But that's another topic.

But what's going on in Montana

in your view?

Yep.

So you're absolutely right.

I mean, your anecdotal kind of comment there was backed up by the data.

So

quick before we get to the influx, though, Montana, as you said, is different than Idaho.

The political history of Montana, people assume it's Montana.

I've seen Yellowstone.

It's a big square western state.

It must be deep red, just like the Dakotas, just like Wyoming, just like Idaho.

And as you well know,

the history of Montana is far more politically complex.

And as a matter of fact,

we had Democrat dominance in this state for a century, for a century.

You know, Mike Mansfield, one of the longest serving Senate presidents in history, Montana, the lone dissenting vote against declaring war in World War II, only won, and that was Montana's at-large congresswoman, the first female congressman in the history of the country, Jeanette Rankin, from Montana.

So, you know, we have kind of this quixotic political history that is definitely not the simplistic big square conservative Western state.

But I think that's also

misunderstood by many because

it's largely labor oriented.

You know, we had a history, again, as you all know, of Anaconda Copper Company, the mining companies, timber companies, railroad companies, really exploiting the state, its workers, its natural gifts.

And that left a really bad taste in Montana's mouths for a generation, or three generations really, that out-of-state money is bad.

Companies are bad.

They're going to come here.

They're going to rape our land, take advantage of our people,

make us work in terrible conditions, pay us minimum wage, and then take all the money and send it out of state.

And it kind of created this very populist,

you know, very union labor-oriented environment here, very much like West Virginia, that was blue for most of the 20th century.

And

of course, you know, as we know, how I really say it, the state didn't really turn red.

The Democrat Party left the state.

I mean, the values of the Democrat Party shifted from a blue-collar white working class, you know, union, you know, the miner, the pipe fitter, the electrician.

And as you know, in the 90s, and especially especially in this century, really shifted to this kind of like

weird nihilistic, you know,

you know, self, you know, loathing American carnage mindset of kind of this globalist coastal regime.

And, you know, for a mine worker in Butte who's pro-life, pro-gun, pro-law enforcement,

you know, deeply religious, yet Democrat.

that identity became harder and harder to align.

And that's changed heavily.

So,

you know, and as we know, pretty much one word really signaled that change, and that word was Trump.

You know, Trump awoken, you know, the white working class across America to say, why do you continue to vote for a party whose policies have done nothing but, you know, make your class worse off for a half century?

Stop empowering them to steal your livelihoods and ruin your lives.

And for Montana, Is that leading up here to the last few years?

You know, eight years ago in Montana, seven out of eight statewide elected seats were Democrats.

I did not.

Seven of eight.

Yep.

Yep.

You know, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Governor, on down the ticket.

Today, eight of nine, now that we have an additional congressional seat, eight of nine are Republican.

So that's how quickly Montana

is.

Is that partly the change in ideology of native born and partly the influx of people from places like where I live that were sick?

and they wanted to get a yes

absolutely i i it's definitely a mix it it's both factors that have come to a confluence here.

Number one, I think, is

the true shift of the Democrat Party's message and priorities away from the white working class.

Once it stopped becoming the party of union jobs and the party of there are no genders anymore, people are like, what the hell are you talking about?

And then also

the fact that, as you said, most, about two to one, roughly two and a half to one, some numbers show two to one, others.

folks moving into Montana are very conservative.

You know, they're fleeing the left coast, Oregon, Washington, California.

And the conservative people, especially during COVID, fled those cities and those places and came to places like Idaho and Montana.

And the conservatives, as you correctly stated, came to Montana and Idaho and made us redder.

The liberals who wanted to leave the carnage of the liberal policies, but continue to vote liberal and make a new place of carnage, they all went to Colorado.

And I think a lot of them, Texas, and some of them, Arizona, Nevada.

But the ones who recognized, hey, I'm leaving this and I'm never going to get stuck in this position again, they've come to Idaho and Montana.

It's kind of like the East Coast with the outflow from New York.

The people that want to keep voting Democrat, but don't want to live under the policies have gone to North Carolina.

The people that want to leave New York and live in a red state have gone to Florida.

And, you know, you got to remind people.

It wasn't that long ago.

Florida was a battleground state.

I mean, hanging Chads, hanging Chads, you know, decided that state.

Now it's a 20-point time close anymore.

So we're kind of similar in that regard.

And

this brings up the question:

you're running against John Tester.

And

he's been a U.S.

Senator since, what is it, 2007?

Or is that, or no, that was one.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then he was, wasn't he in the Montana State Senate before that?

Yeah, yeah, I know.

I mean, he's been an undefeated, undefeated politician for 25 years.

So very talented politician.

Yeah.

So you, and I think that's a good point.

You're up against a very talented population.

And he's been,

as people came and go through this transition, he started in politics when there was still that legacy you just explained to us about the Montana Democratic Party being pretty muscular.

But he also, he was the only one to survive.

So how do you explain to our audience that in this now pretty verifiably red state, you have this ossified or this holdover from the old Montana bipartisan or even Democratic days.

What was it about him that he found successful in getting elected where people

can't be for his agenda because if you look at his voting record, it's pretty left-wing.

So, how do you explain it?

Well, you know, a number of things.

Number one,

he is absolutely left-wing.

He's not a center of the road.

You know, just as yesterday or two days ago, you know, we had the Senate vote on

the policy, the bill to deport illegal immigrants who are convicted of unclimbed, of course, not allow them to be counted in our census so they do not carry electoral weight.

And, you know, no one had to ask what John Tester stood on that because he votes party line.

He always does.

You know, Kamala Harris has been the record-breaking tiebreaker of all vice presidents, and that's because of one person, John Tester.

No one ever asked where his vote's going to be.

Christen Sinema and Joe Manchin, there's always, where are they going to fall?

Where are they going to fall?

You never hear Tester's name go, boy, is he going to be the swing vote to save us from this lunacy?

So you're right, his voting record is very progressive and it always has been.

But, you know, Chuck Schumer spends $200 million per election cycle

and Harry Reid before that to ensure that Montanans don't understand John Tester's true colors.

I mean, it's a masterful game of deception.

I call him Two-Faced Tester because he hits the campaign trail.

He, you know, wears his Carhartt jacket and hops up on his tractor and does the whole, I'm a moderate, common sense, gun-toting Democrat.

You know, I'm not really a Democrat, guys.

That's just, you know, I was born that way and I've got to keep it.

But, you know, me, I'm Tester.

I'm a Republican.

And I mean, I just saw an ad of his the other day where he says he's getting tough on biden and tough on the border yet of course you know two days later he votes against the bill to actually save us from some of the worst impacts of this border crisis so um a lot of it is just effective branding number one uh is that they spend a ton of money every election cycle making sure montanans don't know john tester's true colors that's number one number two though has just been timing again 2018 was this last election cycle Blue wave nationally.

I mean, that was anybody, you know, any Democrat won that year.

You know, you could be convicted of murder in prison as a Democrat.

you'd win that year i mean it was just every democrat swept the tables that year um additionally these off-year elections especially in montana the montana democrat party is very effective at voter turnout on these off years whereas the republican party and the state typically until recently has really reformed itself but wasn't that good at organizing voter turnout

additionally you look at some of the other years he's ran just you know Coincidental timing, 2006, another blue wave year.

He ran against Conrad Burns, who, although it was a great man, was a very unpopular senator at that time due to the Abermond scandal.

That's a good point.

I think you're making a really good point that

given there's been a lot of really good Republican candidates, but he hasn't really, he's had advantages that the Republicans

gave him an opening, don't you think, with his opponents?

That's exactly right.

I mean, you know,

again, Conrad Burns was embroiled in the Abermof scandal and 06 was a very good Democrat year in the state was still a pretty, you know, purple to blue state at that time.

You know, 2012, again, we still had a Democrat governor, a very, you know, purple to blue state.

And, you know, it was the Mitt Romney-Obama year.

You know, Mitt Romney wasn't really necessarily Montana's type of Republican.

So again, it was a, and it's not like he wins in landslides.

He wins by 47, 48% every time.

He only wins.

Yeah, he only wins by after the Burns victory.

He only won by like 20,000 votes.

I guess that's a lot in Montana, but that's not a lot still.

No, it's it's not, it's never a decisive mandate.

And then in 2018, you know, you ran against Matt Rosendale, who, who has been our on-in-law, you know, our congressman for at-large.

And then the Eastern District only got a second one.

And listen, Matt's a strong conservative, but you know, as we've seen the last several months, you know, can be quite the bomb thrower and

divisive, which, which, you know, at the same time, he's done some tremendous things, being able to stand up and fight for budget responsibility.

But, you know, we've also seen at the same time how sometimes those fights can create a lot of enemies.

You know, him, him and the McCarthy world, of course, got extremely sideways.

And

I think that's come back to hurt him, unfortunately.

Even though I fully support

his absolute commitment to we got to get our budget in order.

But in 2018, that race against him.

And what Schumer does every time, as is Harry Reid, before him, what they would do is really get involved in the Republican primary very early.

And they did this time.

I mean, I announced last June and they started immediately spending money, hammering me because they wanted Rosendale to get in.

So we'd have a very expensive primary where we'd beat the hell out of each other, spend all of our money, and have two, whoever came out was going to be a damaged, broke candidate that Kester could walk all over.

So, you know, there's kind of this old playbook that's always been played in Montana.

And that's that's kind of how he's been able to survive every time.

Not to mention the fact that

how much do you expect him to raise in this particular race?

Probably 200 million is what they're going to be.

Are you serious?

200 in Montana?

I mean,

your

TV is a lot cheaper in New York and in Montana than San Francisco.

That goes a long way in Montana, doesn't it?

It does.

But, you know, so I compare it to the gates of thermopoly, you know, the Spartans.

Yeah.

There's 700,000 voters.

So they will tip, they'll typically outspend us two to one, three to one.

Right now I'm being outspended to one in Montana, 10 to one by tester.

Yet the polls came out last week, shows us in a dead heat.

And my trend line from 2% name ID, when I announced last May as a nobody in the state or last June,

you know, we are now dead heat within the margin of error, potentially in the league.

And,

you know, three months ago, I was, you know, 10 points down.

So my trend line has been in one direction.

And but even though they're spending 10 to one against me, now part of that is, like I said, the thermopoly comparison, there's only 700,000 voters in the state.

Those eyeballs can only see the same ads so many times before they've made their decision who they're going to vote for.

So, you know, we reach a point of saturation in our market where their funding advantage is really nullified.

It's not like somewhere like California or Texas, where, you know, there's 30 million people we got to penetrate.

We got a very small voter block.

And how I'm beating the air war is the ground war.

I mean, just today, I'm out with my kids in our pickup truck here in Central Montana.

We're driving to every house, personally, dropping off road signs to people, saying, Hey, I'm Tim Sheehy, here's my road sign, vote for me.

And that's something Tester is not doing and doesn't do.

But I get out there, every town, every VFW post

we're at.

And I'll tell you one thing before, you know, I know we have limited time, but there's one very important statistic in Montana.

You know, all this other stuff's important, the influx of people, two to one, you know, the history of the state.

Trump won the state by 20 points.

So it's a Trump, it's Trump country.

And by the way, Tesla's never shared a ballot with Trump.

And this election, he's going to share a ballot with Joe Biden, who has a 25% approval rating in Montana, and Donald Trump, who has a 75%, roughly, you know, percent approval rating in the state.

So it's going to be, you know, the inverse pressures on him are extreme.

But here's the other statistic that is very important.

The average veteran population across America is 1.5%.

In Montana, it's 10.5%.

We have a lot of veterans in the state.

So there's

70,000 of them?

Right.

And veterans vote more than most.

No, our population is a million, but 700,000 roughly voters.

We have about 100,000 veterans in the state.

Wow.

But veteran voter turnout is higher than, you know, most people turn out 60% or so, 55% voter turnout.

Veterans turn out a lot higher than that.

Sometimes 80 to 90% because they fought for it.

They're informed voters.

They want to have a say in the country they fought for.

So Tester is chairman of the VA committee in the Senate.

He has been on that committee for a long time and he's very good.

I'll give him this at being responsive to veterans as far as he's always at the events.

He's always sure to show up at every VA clinic and take credit for anything the VA has done.

And therefore, the veterans have always turned out for him.

But he's never ran against a veteran.

Never once has he stood across the debate states from a veteran, let alone a combat wounded, you know, valor-decorated veteran who's married to a combat veteran, who employs hundreds of veterans.

And, you know, if he wants to run on his VA record, which he always does, I welcome him to do so because the VA right now is

in a world to hurt.

It's a world to hurt.

Record veteran suicides, record wait times, you know, VA resources go into illegal immigrants.

If he wants to run on that record, I'll be happy to pin him to it all day long.

And I can do it in a way that is authentic with real experience as a wounded vet.

The VA was my sole source of health care when I got out.

You know, he can't pull the whole, I'm pro-veteran and you're not card with me.

And that scares them.

Let me, uh, we're going to go to a quick break.

We're talking to Tim Shee.

He's the Republican challenger to the tester Senate seat.

It's a fascinating conversation.

We're going to be right right back.

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And we're back with Tim Sheehy.

Tim,

if you were to say, what are the three or four main issues that are Montanans to the degree that they're the same with the national issues?

Are they unique to Montana?

What are they?

And how do you differ from him?

So I differ on basically every issue completely.

And I think Montana, there is

a lot of the issues are national.

You know, even though we're a northern border state, you know, from Eureka to ikalaca montana is a massive state you know we're the fourth largest state uh from one corner to the other it's almost the distance uh from florida to to philadelphia i mean it it's it's a long ways from one corner to the other and um

uh border the southern border i mean right now billings uh was recently ranked the ninth most dangerous city in america for violent crime which for montana as you know that's crazy montanans you know normally don't lock their car or lock their home to have that kind of crime in our streets is just it's just extremely disturbing.

Drugs, fentanyl.

I mean, there was an article in NBC News of all things about three weeks ago talking about how cartels are targeting the last best place because a lot of reasons.

We have some very affluent resort communities, but we also have a lot of reservation land around our state.

And as we all know, the reservation lands have a lot less law enforcement presence and a lot less law enforcement authorities than

typical

American lands.

So they can use those reservations as their transshipment points and distribution points for their product nationwide.

And they are.

Human trafficking is up in some cases, 300% across the state.

Violent crime.

Fentanyl is hollowing out our rural communities in a way that is existential for some of them.

It's spelling the N for some of these communities.

So people are feeling it, and they're tired of being told that it's not real.

And Montanans know it's real because as a northern border state, we have a southern border problem and they're sick of it.

So the border is number one.

As we said just, you know, 48 hours ago, we saw John Tester yet again stand behind Joe Biden's disastrous open border policies.

This isn't soundbite politics.

This is just a fact.

We have, you know, millions coming across our border.

I used to live on the border wall, literally in Imperial Beach, California.

You could hit it from a baseball with a baseball from my front step.

And then trained all from Yuma Proving Grounds to Camp

Billy Macon out in the desert there in Island, California, all up and down that border for years.

So over three successive presidential administrations, I've been all over that border.

And I was just in Yuma three weeks ago.

It's never seen anything like what's going on there now.

And it's intentional.

I don't care what anybody says.

It's absolutely intentional.

It's a choice.

It is.

And he's stood behind that every step of the way.

So we have to just hold his feet to the fire on that here in Montana.

So that's one issue that's just glaringly obvious.

Of course, you know, inflation and, you know, at his core, I truly don't believe Dantez is a bad person.

I mean, maybe he is.

I don't know him.

I never met him.

So I generally assume people are good until I'm shown otherwise.

I just think his worldview is that of a socialist.

I really think he believes government is the answer.

He's an old school kind of Montana union socialist that, you know, kind of Marxist outlook, which is, you know, profit is bad, business is bad, government is the answer to our problems.

And more government, better.

And, you know, we see that in his support for Biden's economic policies, which in Montana have had an incredibly compressing effect.

on working people all across Montana, of all classes, lower class, middle class, upper class.

Real incomes are down in Montana.

The cost of living in some of our communities for housing has gone up three times since COVID.

3X, the huge influx of people here during COVID and many other things.

You know, diesel, I mean, hell, you know, my driveway here, I just drove up with the kids, you know, it's 11 miles long.

So, you know, when diesel's $6, like you drive to your mailbox and back in Montana for a lot of people, they drive two hours to work every day each way.

So, you know, those kind of impacts, which are mocked by so many of our mainstream media hosts, that, oh, this inflation isn't that bad.

It's all in your head.

Inflation is not real.

Well, tell that to people in Montana who are farmers or ranchers who fertilize and fill the tractors with diesel and are seeing these costs go through the roof.

And real incomes, you know, whether you're buying timber,

building materials, wire for your ranch, you know, barbed wire, fencing wire, electrical wire, hot wire, whatever you're trying to do to run your operation, everything's more expensive in Montana right now.

And wages have not gone up to match it.

So people are seeing that and feeling that.

So, of course, uh

those are some of the the kitchen table issues let me ask you a real quick question uh tim do you think uh

will we

will joe biden come in to actually campaign for it

he's absolutely not yeah i don't think i don't so

he's not going to have chuck schumer

or joe biden or any of this squad or any of the people we see in the news that are the obamas or any of these people are not going to come into

i mean that is the democratic Party today that's running things.

It is.

Who he always brings in state to help him is Pearl Jam, the band, always comes, has a concert for him.

And then, you know, unfortunately, you know,

one of my favorite actors, you know, Jeffrey Lebowski, you know, the big Lebowski, you know, he'll come through

and do an event for him.

But that's usually the flavor.

He can't bring in Democrat politicians.

He doesn't bring any Democratic politician.

I mean, our former governor, Brian Schweitzer, was very popular, and he's kind of the old school kind of Democrat of the 90s, which, you know, was, I think, representative of the state at the time.

You know, he'll make an appearance because he's still quite popular.

But, you know, he doesn't bring out, you know, he's definitely not bringing out the AOCs and the Chuck Schumers and definitely Joe Biden.

So

largely it's going to be kind of, he doesn't get out a lot and do a lot of grassroots campaigning.

It'll be a lot of air war.

And really his campaign method is what he's doing now.

A million dollars a week.

They spend attack

a million a week for the last last three months.

Is he

are you going to have debate scheduled?

Will he agree to a debate?

Or what?

What's the I'm sure he will?

I mean, I think he'll debate.

I would definitely want to debate because I can draw so many contrasts to him on all these issues.

And but right now, his sole, the sole campaign strategy, again, is hide who he really is, hide his voting record, because his voting record, he's 100% Planned Parenthood, you know, D from the NRA, 95% and lockstapper Schumer and Biden, open border, pro-inflation, you know, pro-Hamas,

all the craziness we see from the left, John Testers and lockstep with that.

So

their sole strategy is to hammer just vicious offense on the opponent.

And that's what they've been doing to me for months: attacking me, my businesses, saying I'm a corrupt government contractor because I fight wildfires and protect Americans and their communities, saying, you know, my family's corrupt, that, you know,

I'm fake, that I don't really live here, that I somehow like, you know,

ranch and farm my land and own a business, but somehow I don't actually.

How can he make that argument when 50% of his constituencies were not born?

Well,

they kind of throw whatever at the wall and hope that sticks.

I mean,

if I hadn't moved to Montana and I was there for eight or nine years and he said, don't vote for Tim because he's moved to Montana.

He wasn't born here.

I would think, well, you don't want my vote.

Well, you're exactly right.

That's it.

So they did back off that.

Early on, they were really aggressive.

Tim wasn't born here, therefore, he's unqualified to serve.

And pretty quickly, I think they saw their field polling was negative.

So they quickly backed off that because, number one, more voters are not from Montana than are from here.

Number two, most people don't really care where you're born anymore.

You know, no offense to those from California, New York City, that has a little different flavor.

I'm from Minnesota.

And most of Montana's family, Minnesota, is from there.

So it's less of a flavor.

But the big thing is

they're, they always, they run their own candidates who are their candidate for governor this time from Kansas.

Their candidate for Congress, you know, this time, uh, is not from Montana.

Their candidate for Congress last time, you know, Kathleen Williams was from Berkeley, literally, who's actually from Berkeley.

She was born in Berkeley.

So, you know, they keep running out-of-state Californians.

And apparently, it's okay to run as an out-of-state Californian when you're a Democrat, but not when you're a Republican.

So, I think the kind of jigs up on that whole shit.

So, they did it for a bit.

And also, here's the other big, you you know,

intellectual inconsistency with that.

Here's the party criticizing me saying, you know, because I was fighting for our country for a decade, protecting our nation, and I didn't live here during those years.

Somehow that's my fault.

But really, here's the party saying that.

anybody and everybody has a human right to come to America and be here and vote here.

And, you know, we have no say over who should be allowed to come into our country because it's a moral abomination for us to determine who can come here and who can't.

Yet, according to them, if you're not born in the state of Montana,

you're not a legitimate Montanan.

So, how do you square the fact that

citizens of the world can come and be Americans and vote here, even if they're illegal?

Yet, someone from one state over can't move here and be considered a real Montanan.

And I think that intellectual incongruity is tough for them to square with the voters who say, you're pro-open borders, you're pro-no-voter ID, you're pro illegals doing everything that a citizen can.

Why can we not have someone move here and be accepted as a Montana?

So,

you know, I think for the most part that that kind of stickers up.

Let me ask,

because we've had a change in the Senate minority view, do you feel that the Republican Party in general and the Senate political action committees in particular look at this seat as the seat that they could make the difference in the Senate?

It is.

And frankly, that's how I got into this race.

You know,

I never had visions like I didn't plan to be an entrepreneur.

I didn't plan to be a politician, truly.

I wanted to keep serving in the military and got out and started my business.

But and I love my businesses, but I started getting involved in politics.

I've lived in Montana 10 years and I started getting involved in politics during the Afghan withdrawal,

the shameful, disastrous withdrawal from Kabul in summer 21.

You know, my wife and I both served there.

I lost friends there, was wounded there.

I carried friends home in boxes from that war.

And to see the disgraceful manner in which we pulled out of that, abandoned hundreds of American citizens, lost 13 Americans at the Abbey Cape, and dishonored the sacrifice of an entire generation of American veterans after the deadliest attack on American soil in our history.

For me, it was just, it literally shook my soul.

And it was the first time I was ashamed to be an American.

And that's true.

I was ashamed to be an American during that time.

And what really hit it for me was during that disaster, me and so many other veterans, I played a very small part, but we all worked hard.

And we got over 200

families out of Afghanistan safely, people who'd fought for us alongside us, spies, interpreters, pilots.

And, you know, some even I hired my company.

We employ them now because we owed that to them.

They stuck their necks out to fight alongside us, knowing that one day the Taliban and Al-Qaeda, if we abandoned them, would come cut their heads off, which is exactly what's been going on.

So that's when I got involved in politics, but not as a candidate, more as a fundraiser,

as a speaker at events.

I reached out to Ryan Zinki, our congressman.

He put my purple heart on me.

Our governor, Greg Gianforte, is a great American senator, Steve Daines, who's obviously head of the NRSC, and said, listen, I'll host events.

I'll give speeches, whatever it takes.

I have a personal vendetta against this Biden administration and the disastrous policies that they're enacting.

And I want them gone.

Whatever I can do to support the cause, let me know.

And through my speaking tours and hosting events, eventually,

you know, I got pulled aside by a couple of them.

And Senator Daines said, hey, you know, we've got a really important race coming up.

This is the race that will determine control the Senate.

And I said, yeah, I know.

As always, I'll be there to to support you.

I'll host events, whatever I can do to help, sir.

And said, well, I got a new idea for you this time.

Instead of just hosting an event, you know, what do you say?

You make a run at it.

And didn't see it coming, wasn't expected for us.

But I went home and talked to my wife, talked to my brother, my parents, and a lot of people I respect deeply.

And they said, hey, we know it's not something you want to do, but right now this country needs a new generation of leaders.

And frankly, it needs people who can win, not just fight, but can win.

And I think that's something our party struggled with.

You know, know, I'm a lifelong Republican,

but we've struggled with fielding candidates who not just fight, but also win and make progress and actually achieve victories.

And that's what we have to have this cycle.

This Senate race in Montana will determine control the Senate.

I think it will.

Absolutely.

Do you feel that just as an outsider who tries to follow these races, that there's a sense I don't mean of doom, but of desperation that they see that maybe people in Montana are sort of on to tester what he does and that

and that right now, because of this Biden disaster, people are, there's just a seething anger.

I can feel it.

And

I just feel that the left, I guess the way they attack the right, it's almost as if they're saying, if I was the right

and they had done to me what we're doing to them, I would.

you know, they would be really, really angry.

And that's why they're, I think, it's almost like they're afraid that conservatives are going to come back in power.

Not that the conservatives are going to retaliate in any way that's untoward, but I think it's almost they feel like they've been running a scam on the American people and the jig is up.

That's my impression.

Maybe it's true in Montana as well with Tester.

Do you feel that

he feels that maybe you just can't,

what's not going to, what can't go on can't go on.

And maybe it's just such an anomaly in Montana that he's been able to do this again and again.

But now

the national political atmosphere is so changed, I don't think it's going to be viable.

Do you?

I mean.

No, and I think you're absolutely right.

I think we're seeing it in Montana and nationwide that, you know, you can only piss down people's backs so long and tell them it's raining before eventually they have the grout and say, hey, you're pissing on my back, buddy.

It ain't raining.

And, you know, Joe Biden's State of the Union the other night was a prime example of that.

I mean,

what a speech completely disconnected from reality, delivered in such a sanctimonious, angry manner that, you know, everyday working Americans are like, What do you, everything's great?

Are you kidding me?

How is everything great?

Crime's through the roof.

You know, people are dying, you know, 70,000 Americans a year.

You know, World War III is on our doorstep all over the world because of your abject weakness and your idiotic foreign policy.

I know it.

You know, inflammation.

All of us feel for it.

I got really angry when he was obviously

waiting for somebody to mention Lake and Riley.

And so he had that little button.

And then

he calls her the USC football coach, Lincoln Riley.

And that's to prove how

he does that to prove how aware and sensitive and compassionate he is.

He can't even get her name right.

And then he, the next couple of days, he apologizes for using the word illegal.

I've never seen a president actually, and I'm 70, Barack Obama went after the Supreme Court in his 2010 State of the Union, but he didn't address them specifically.

Biden turned to them and attacked the justice

right in the congressional hall.

I've never seen that before.

A president in a State of the Union attacked the Supreme Court justice.

It was shot.

It was, but that's to be expected.

I mean, look what they did to Brett Kavanaugh when he, I mean,

what they're doing to me.

I mean, the left's tactic is they have to, I call it dangerous distractions.

They have to distract Americans from what's actually happening in order to win.

Because if they talk about the issues, they lose.

And you see it all the time, sometimes with these on-the-street authentic interviews where they don't attach a name.

They say, hey, would you, what do you think about these policies?

And they're asking these liberal college girls who,

would you vote for this policy?

Do you think it's a good idea to let

five-time convicted violent murderers from other countries into our country?

And they're like, oh, of course not.

Like, are you aware that's exactly what Biden's doing?

Oh, well, that's different.

So they have to distract the Americans from the truth, which is um that there's an all-out uh destruction happening of the of basic american ideals that have underpinned the free world for you know its entire existence and you know this party uh is doing it intentionally and and to your point in montana getting back to montana you know tester has been a foot soldier for all these policies his entire career and um you know

Montanans have not had the benefit of being educated that because, you know there's been crowded elections, there have been long primaries.

We have a relatively late primary in June.

So normally the senate cycles run like this.

For you know a year, the Republicans are beating each other up trying to determine who's the true conservative.

You know, all these litmus tests, you know, who's the only, who's the rhino and who's the real conservative.

And that's all they hear about for a year.

Meanwhile, you know, Tester's in the background.

No one's even talking about him.

And, you know, Schumer and Harry are spending lots of money to make sure that

the Republican primary goes the way they want.

And then when the primary is over, by the time the Republican candidate regroups and gets their money together, you know, they got two months to run the election, you know, July, August, into September, which in

Montana in the summer, everyone's you know putting up crops, they're ranching, they're farming, they're camping, they're fishing, no one's paying attention in July, August to politics.

So, really, they got September, October.

What's happening?

They're already done.

What's happened?

What happens?

What is the primary this year?

In real, you're on the ballot in June for the Republican nomination, yes.

You don't really have a viable opponent, do you?

No, we don't.

So Matt Rosendale jumped in briefly.

And I've had a good relationship with Matt.

I hosted in my home for pump raisers and all, but the reality was he had a shot in 18.

It didn't work out.

And he's been in Congress ever since.

So he did jump in.

He was only in for, I think, six days, got in, President Trump endorsed me and kind of made clear, hey, man, I think you should stay in the House this time.

We're trying to, we think Tim's the guy.

And so Matt for a few days, then he got out and cleared the field.

And, you know, filing deadline is today.

And

that's it.

So I'm the sole Republican candidate.

We do have one guy who, you know, pulls at 1%.

But, you know,

it's not a jungle primary.

So can you have cross-voting?

No, it's not a jungle primary.

Now, technically, I mean, theoretically, they could come in to register to vote, but then, you know,

but no, it's not a jungle primary like California.

So we're getting near our end.

So a lot of people who listen to this podcast, I get a lot of letters about who do I donate money to and how do I help?

And so somebody's listening out here.

A lot of people are listening.

How can they help you?

What website can just give us some information so we could

get money or

yeah.

Well, so Tim4MT.com, Tim4MT.com.

And what Americans have to realize is this is not a Montana.

U.S.

Senate race.

This is a national race.

This is the race that will determine control the United States Senate in 2024.

And it's important for your listeners to also realize that in 2026 and 2028, there are zero,

zero pickup opportunities for Republicans in the U.S.

Senate.

Just statistically, the way the math is, six-year terms, a third term is over every cycle, every two years.

In this cycle, we have three blue senators in red states, West Virginia, Ohio, and Montana.

So we should be flipping all three of those seats.

West Virginia is done.

Jim Justice is going to walk away with that.

That puts us even.

That just gets us to par.

And we have to win the White House for that matter.

If we don't win the White House, then we're still stuck.

If we, Ohio, we have a messy four-way primary, all good candidates, but it is going to be a mess.

And it's only a plus-six state there.

Montana's, you know, plus 15.

And we have one candidate.

So Montana is the most likely seat to flip in the nation.

And that will determine control of the Senate for the next decade.

So everybody.

Everybody listening, I really urge you in the strongest terms to send Tim

a political donation.

And you young people, what if a lot of young people wanted just to spend the summer in Montana and help you out campaigning?

Would they be welcome?

Absolutely.

And thank you for saying that because that's at every campaign stop.

I mean, that's one thing I think the Republican Party has failed at

for the last 20 years.

We have not been good at engaging young people.

You know, we have surrendered the young people to the Democrats via social media and Hollywood.

And we've said, you know what, we're never going to get them anyway, so let's not waste our time.

And if we don't try, of course we're not going to get him.

We've got to engage with the youth.

I'm going to high schools, I'm going to colleges, I'm going to youth groups saying, listen, you may not be political, or if you are political, you may think you're a Democrat, but look what's happening to this nation.

And we have to engage with our younger voters.

And I think younger candidates like me help, you know, no offense, it's hard to put a 75-year-old guy in front of 18-year-old kids and form a connection.

It just is.

But when you're younger and say, hey, I wasn't that long ago, I was in your shoes.

Or I got kids, you know, I got four kids, four, six, eight, and 10.

And we've we've got to connect with the next generation of voters better.

We've got to get to them and talk to them, not even in partisan terms, because this isn't a partisan world anymore.

It's basic American common sense.

Like, why do we want to have

a million criminals a month coming into this country?

We want immigrants to come here.

This country was built on immigration, but they should come here the right way.

We should know who they are.

And then we can welcome them here the way we would normally welcome immigrants, but it's hard to welcome them when they're pouring across our border, bringing a completely

criminal element with them that we all know exists.

And inflation, we can't print money six times faster than the economy is growing.

We can't deny there are two genders.

We can't be funding every global war on the planet and expect there to be world peace.

So what are we doing to this world and to this country?

We have to coalesce around a message of common sense.

And that common sense is pretty simple, in my opinion.

All Americans want pretty much the same thing.

Cheap gas, safe streets, good schools, boys and boys, girls or girls.

If we focus on simple issues, we're going to kick ass.

You know, everybody in California, I mean, Steve Garvey came in second.

One, we had two races.

It's a long story, as you know, but he came in

first and second, partly because of Adam Schiff's weird strategy of funding him to get rid of Kathleen Porter.

Californians have a stake really in the Senate.

And I urge all you Californians, whether you go to Montana Montana or not, I'm not talking about carpet bagging, but you should try to donate to the Tim's campaign.

It would make a big difference, not just in the lives of Montanans, but this is a national race.

And

if Donald Trump were to win and to reverse, try to reverse this last four years,

what will be four years of madness, it won't do any good if we don't own the Senate.

You have to win the Senate, and you have to expand the House margin.

And there's no better place to do it than in in Montana.

So I urge all of you, please, to give money to Tim Sheehee and see if he can stop this aberration of the Tester Senate seat.

Any final comments, Tim, before we leave?

Well, first of all, thank you for focusing on this race.

To be honest, it has been a bit of a struggle getting national attention on this race.

You know, it's people say, well, it's Montana.

Who cares what happens in Montana?

It's flyover country.

But as you've correctly pointed out, I mean, this is a pivotal race for the future of the nation.

And people need to tune in and realize that this isn't just a race for who represents Montana.

This is a race for, you know, the future of the Supreme Court.

You know, the Democrats have laid out what their plan is if they have the Senate again.

That is add two more states and the filibuster, expand the Supreme Court, appoint radical judicial nominees, radical cabinet appointees.

You know, we look at Tracy Stone Manning right now, who's one of our top federal land management agency leaders, you know, the Bureau of Land Management.

And, you know, she was a tree spiker, a convicted tree spiker, ecotourist out of missoula you probably knew of her back in your day and now she's running the largest landowning organization in the nation and she's there because john tester put it there so she she is a perfect example of what can happen when we don't have control of the senate um and if we win the white house with you know god help us if we don't but if we win the white house president trump needs a senate to get anything done and if we don't win the white house That is our firewall against more of this absolute insanity in this country.

That's our firewall to ensure that at least the damage can be contained from the White House.

Because if we lose the White House and we don't have the Senate, you know, we saw what, we've seen what's happened in three and a half years.

Think about four more years of this lunacy.

It's truly scary.

So people need to invest in this race.

And I'm a businessman.

I'm sure some people listening are businessman.

Return on investment ROI, your best ROI in this nation right now.

If you're going to donate $1, $5, $100, $6,000 to a campaign, we are the best ROI in the nation because this is the most impactful race you you can support nationally.

So please consider that, especially if you're in a deep blue state, no offense, California.

I know you've got to sick of a doctor.

But if you're in a state like California, New York, Colorado, that's already gone and you got $5,000 to spend this election or whatever it is, send it our way because I'll make sure it counts.

That's a very good advice, everybody, because we're 41 million people, but people forget that we are really the largest red state and almost the largest with 15 million conservative voters.

And

before you decide to leave California, maybe take a deep breath and say we can change the nation first and help Tim out with its sizable donation.

And I promise that I'll be writing about this race as it gets close to November.

Thank you very much, Tim Sheehy, for being our guest today on the Victor Davis Hansen podcast.

Thanks for what you're doing, Victor.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.