The decorated ex-US Navy SEAL who could hand Donald Trump a Senate majority has sparked fury after crossing the line with an insensitive joke about Native Americans.
Tim Sheehy held a narrow lead in the polls against Montana’s Democrat incumbent Jon Tester before his comments at a series of campaign fundraisers were leaked to Native American website Char-Koosta News.
In one remark, the GOP frontrunner boasted about heading off with members of the Crow people to rope and brand cattle, telling his audience it’s ‘a great way to bond with all the Indians while they’re drunk at 8 am’.
In another, he joked that ‘they’ll let you know when they like you or not, if Coors Light cans flying by your head. They respect that.’
Democrats have jumped on the comments in a state where the 70,000 Native Americans of voting age could decide the race.
‘Montana has the 5th highest Native-American population of any state,’ noted Zac Harmon. ‘This is just so racist and contemptuous towards them.’
Donald Trump appeared at a campaign rally Montana’s GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy last month ahead of one of the country’s tightest Senate races
The decorated veteran (right) has cultivated the Native-American vote in a state with the country’s fifth-highest population
The MAGA-aligned businessman entered the race in the usually deep-red state after a celebrated Naval career in which he was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.
He started the aerial firefighting business Bridger Aerospace after returning to the US from tour of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq and won Trump’s personal endorsement at a rally in Montana last month.
But the 38-year-old resigned from his business earlier this year after it posted losses of nearly $100 million and has been dogged by claims of dishonesty.
During an October 2015 trip to Montana’s Glacier National Park, he reported accidentally shooting himself in the arm with his Colt .45 revolver.
As his race for the Senate gathered steam last year, he began claiming that his wound was received during combat.
‘I got thick skin though it’s not thick enough. I have a bullet stuck in this arm still from Afghanistan,’ he told one audience.
His 2023 memoir ‘Mudslingers’ offers differing accounts as to how he received the wound and how many times he was shot.
And in April this year, he told the Washington Post that he had lied about his injury to the National Park Service Ranger for fear of a potential military investigation.
He explained that he spoke to the ranger in hospital after a hiking injury in the park aggravated a bullet wound he received during a night patrol in Afghanistan in 2012.
He said he did not report 2012 injury at the time because he did not know whether it came from friendly fire and did not want an investigation to harm the reputation of his teammates.
Sheehy(pictured with wife) initially told a ranger that he accidentally discharged a weapon and shot himself when he was hiking with his family in the park in 2015
Sheehy has provided various conflicting accounts of the wound in his right forearm during speeches, campaign events, and in his 2023 memoir ‘Mudslingers’
Sheehy told the paper he was not sure who shot him as the night was ‘chaotic’, though he believed it was someone on his team.
‘To be very clear, I don’t know where the bullet came from,’ he added.
‘Sometimes people find that hard to believe, but in Hollywood, they make it look like [in] a gunfight everyone knows exactly what’s going on. … That’s just not how it goes down.’
He said that if the Park Service had reported the bullet wound it would have led to a ‘massive investigation’ by NCIS – Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
He added that in Afghanistan, he was shot twice in total, saying, ‘I was not wounded, but I was … technically hit by another round in a separate incident’.
He faces more controversy over his claims at a campaign rally that he had parachuted into Glacier National Park during his military training.
He made the claim at a campaign event in July but a park official insisted that parachuting, hang gliding and base jumping are not allowed in the park – even for the military.
‘There is no way to get permission,’ the official added.
Sheehy has courted the Native American vote in his state and posted photos of himself riding at the Crow Fair in August last year.
He started the aerial firefighting business Bridger Aerospace after returning to the US from tour of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq but resigned from his business earlier this year after it posted losses of nearly $100 million
His comments about drunkenness and throwing beer cans emerged on Monday, ten months after he made them at two campaign events in Shelby and Hamilton in November last year.
His three-term opponent is a former chair of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee but has faced controversy of his own as he struggles to keep his seat in the toss-up race amid claims he has been paying the state’s athletes for their endorsement.
Montana Together, a group backing Tester’s reelection, was willing to pay between $400 and $2,400 for ‘unscripted video endorsements on Instagram Reels,’ according to Lily Meskers, a junior studying journalism and D1 track and field athletics.
‘The deal offered all university athletes a chance to participate and earn big money,’ she noted.
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