9 April 2024 — 0956 mdt
Political malpractice by Tim’s campaign — again!
Do Tim Sheehy’s various versions of how
he got shot shoot his credibility all to hell?
By James Conner
Tim Sheehy
After the Washington Post revealed Saturday that Republican senate hopeful Tim Sheehy can’t provide a consistent explanation for how a bullet became lodged in his forearm, Sheehy’s campaign spent yesterday in damage control mode, trying to spin his mendacity as a heroic, if perhaps unwise, attempt to protect the Navy Seals who served with him in Afghanistan. The campaign’s obvious hope is that his under duress mea culpa will settle the dust and allow the issue to blow over.
Don’t count on that happening. I think his straight arrow image is irreparably damaged.
A preventable blunder
The Post reported:
Sheehy has offered varying accounts of how many times he was shot while serving and under what circumstances. In his book [Mudslingers: A True Story of Aerial Firefighting (An American Origins Story), 12 December 2023], he wrote that he was wounded numerous times and never reported many of his wounds because he did not want to get pulled off the battlefield or imperil a fellow service member’s record.
At a presentation at Billings Clinic Hospital in 2022 about a trauma center effort he had helped fund, Sheehy said he had been shot “three times” while serving. “I was wounded on about seven different occasions, IEDs, and was shot three times on different occasions, in different spots in my body,” he said. “I was shot multiple times,” he said in a Shelby, Mont., campaign event in November.
He wrote in one section of his book that he had multiple “bullet wounds.”
Later in the book, he wrote that there was only one time that “my body was actually hit by a bullet.” He described going on a routine “walkabout” to resupply local Afghan troops when suddenly he and his troops came under fire from a ridgeline. Sheehy wrote that he didn’t notice his arm hurt until they dropped the supplies off and the adrenaline wore off. He thought he had hit his arm on a rock. Once he got back to the base, his arm felt “pretty sore,” Sheehy wrote.
“I learned later there was a bullet in my arm!” he wrote. “It’s still there today by the way.”
In another chapter in the book, Sheehy wrote that he was struck “by a friendly ricochet bullet” in Afghanistan. In that instance, he said he never reported it because he didn’t want to get sent home or have the person who accidentally shot him (“a total stud who went on to a successful career as a SEAL”) be punished, either.
Which of Sheehy’s versions of being shot is true? Is any version true? How would we know? He admits he’s a liar. Therefore none of his accounts of being shot can be trusted.
Furthermore, why did he publish a book with conflicting accounts of getting shot? Before releasing Mudslinging he should have had two skilled opposition researchers independently review the book for land mines, time bombs, and grenades that could be used against him.
Not Sheehy’s first major screw-up
This is not the first time that Sheehy’s campaign hurt him with political malpractice. Last summer, his website builders illustrated his Montana cattle ranch with a photograph of a cattle operation in Kentucky (Tim Sheehy should fire his blundering South Carolina based campaign consultants). That was political malpractice — and neither Tim nor his campaign learned anything from it.
Although Matt Rosendale abandoned his senate campaign, Sheehy still faces two primary opponents: former MT SecST and PSC commissioner Brad Johnson, and Charles Walkingchild. Neither is actively campaigning nor raising the millions that successfully challenging Sheehy would require. Neither will win the primary, but both men may receive a lot of protest votes cast by Republicans disgusted with Sheehy’s hapless and feckless campaign.
Jon Tester
So, Sheehy, his credibility shot all to hell with self-inflicted wounds, will win the nomination to challenge popular three-term incumbent Democratic Sen. Jon Tester, a wily and formidable old pro whose campaigns are textbook examples of political competence.
Sheehy’s only hope now is that his failings notwithstanding, he’ll be swept into office on a wave of support for Donald Trump, whose endorsement Sheehy trumpets. That could happen, but I doubt it will just as I doubt this is the last time that Sheehy trips over himself.