Tester has some explaining to do. Update to this story.
With a flat-top haircut, three missing fingers and an impressive girth, Sen. Jon Tester has somehow kept a low profile in Congress. That’s until he caught the attention of Americans — and President Donald Trump — by airing startling allegations that toppled Veterans Affairs nominee Ronny Jackson.
It’s not necessarily the kind of high-stakes debut political strategists would dream up for Tester, a plain-spoken Montana Democrat running for re-election in a Trump-won state with more veterans per capita than almost any other. But the deed is done. Trump is responding. And now it’s game on in a midterm race that could help determine control of the Senate.
“I want to tell you that Jon Tester — I think this is going to cause him a lot of problems in his state,” Trump said Thursday on “Fox & Friends.”
Trump is still defending Jackson, the Navy rear admiral who served three presidents as a White House physician but withdrew from consideration for the VA position Thursday among allegations of drinking, overprescribing prescription drugs and fostering a hostile work environment.
Just as vigorously, Trump turned his sights on Tester, and is likely to swoop in to campaign against the senator. Trump’s twitter thumbs haven’t even engaged yet.
“Jon Tester has to have a big price to pay in Montana because I don’t think people in Montana — the admiral is the kind of person that they respect and admire and they don’t like seeing what’s happened to him,” Trump said.For Tester, heading home for the weekend, he says he wouldn’t have done it any differently, believing it’s his duty as the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, to scrutinize the nominees and ensure the best person to head the troubled VA.
“We had a job to do and we did it,” Tester said.
The senator says he didn’t seek out the allegations, but that more than 20 military and retired military personnel brought concerns to the committee. It would have been a “dereliction of duty” not to investigate, he said. And even though the claims were not fully probed or proven true, he says it was important to bring them forward publicly for the sake of transparency.
“It’s about doing the best thing you can do to make sure you got a great country,” he said.