Montana State Auditor Matt Rosendale joined SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Tuesday’s Breitbart News Daily to talk about his bid for the U.S. Senate against incumbent Democrat Jon Tester.
Marlow described Tester as “a Democrat in one of the reddest states in the Union,” which would seem to make him vulnerable. Rosendale agreed, saying he has “incredibly high hopes for this race.”
“Right now, not only have I got the support of several of your major allies – the Club for Growth, and the Senate Conservatives Fund, and now most recently the Great America Alliance – that I am just thrilled with, but it takes so much more than that, as you well know. You’ve got to have the support of the people.” Rosendale said.
“I can tell you that we’ve already established county chairs covering all 56 counties throughout Montana to make sure that we’ve got our grassroots organizations in place and ready to mount this army to take this campaign on. We are very optimistic about making this happen,” he reported.
“Oh boy, I’ve got a lot of fertile ground when I go up against John Tester,” Rosendale said, eager for the political battle to be joined. “Right now, we’ve got 10 percent of the population in Montana that are either active military or veterans. Talk about deplorables – well, he’s done a deplorable job sitting on the Veterans Affairs Committee and trying to get anything done for the veterans. He comes back and he’ll make sure that he appropriates funds to get new facilities built, but then we do not have adequate staffing within this facility.”
“At last update, over four thousand Montana vets were on VA wait lists for more than 30 days beyond their preferred date to have a doctor’s appointment – so not just 30 days to get a doctor’s appointment, 30 days beyond where they would like to have a doctor’s appointment,” Rosendale continued.
“They start proclaiming that the Choice Act is going to resolve all this – well, it hasn’t. We have private physicians who are willing to treat our veterans, and what we found is that they’re not getting paid. I had a physician contact me about two weeks ago and he said, ‘Matt, I love dealing with the veterans, but the federal government is making me wait six hundred days to get compensated for the work that I’m doing. I just can’t carry that on the books for that long,’” he said.
“John Tester voted for the Iran deal,” Rosendale added. “So now we’re talking about this big debate with North Korea, what’s going on, are they going to shoot a missile. Guess what? He started all of this long ago, and he’s put us down the exact same path with this Iran deal – only worse, because not only did they allow them to continue to develop these nuclear weapons, but they gave them $400 million to do so, and to spread around the Middle East with dictators and tyrants to continue terrorist activities. I mean, it’s just absolutely terrible.”
Rosendale described his background as a real estate broker and developer, working for many years at a firm where he was partners with his brother.
“After about 20 years of the real estate industry, where we had built it up from a little one-off, just five-agent operation, we built that that into a four-office, 65-agent, multimillion-dollar firm,” he recalled. “At that point I relocated to my ranch in eastern Montana and really thought that I was going to spend much of my time in ranching. The community soon discovered I had skills that would serve them better in the legislature, so I did do a short stint in the Montana legislature and quickly went from the House to the Senate. My colleagues elected me as the Senate majority leader. They saw me as a person who would get things done.”
“I really focus on making sure that we pass good policy. I don’t mind throwing my elbows around to get it done. I tell folks when I walk into a room, when I leave you may not like me, you may not agree with me, but by golly you will not misunderstand where I am. I get things done,” he said.
From the state legislature, Rosendale’s career led to the office of the insurance commissioner, known as the state auditor in Montana.
“Even though I was outspent four to one, I won that race by eight points against a Democrat who had been groomed for twenty years,” he said. “That’s why I’m very optimistic again. John Tester right now has raised millions of dollars. Our fundraising efforts are going extremely well, but we are more focused on the actual work and the people of the state. They want to put somebody forward that’s going to help implement the president’s agenda.”
“We’ve got an incredible opportunity right now to expand our economy, to preserve our culture, and to protect our nation. That’s the president’s agenda. It’s good for the nation, and it’s great for Montana, I will tell you,” Rosendale declared.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. Eastern.
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