Montana Rep’s Fight for Public Lands Featured on 60 Minutes

Montana Congressman Ryan Zinke (R-MT01) led the charge in defense of public lands. CBS' 60 Minutes highlighted "his San Juan Hill" during Sunday night's episode, which also featured several other Montanans.

60 Minutes highlighted the fact that "Zinke grew up in Whitefish, Montana and served as a secretary of the interior during President Trump's first term."

Here's one of the quotes from the segment that stood out from Rep. Zinke: "It's a red, white, and blue issue. It's not a Democrat or Republican issue. This is an American issue. And once you sell land, you're not gonna get it back."

Here's the full 60 Minutes segment: 

As you may recall from earlier this year, outdoor host Randy Newberg praised not just Zinke, but the entire Montana Republican Congressional Delegation for backing public lands.

Randy Newberg hosts a couple of hunting shows called Fresh Tracks and On Your Own Adventures. He also runs the Hunt Talk web forum and podcast, all focused on public land hunting and conservation. He joined us on our statewide radio show, Montana Talks with Aaron Flint back in April. 

Randy Newberg: "Congressman Zinke has always been there on the public land issue, and Senator Daines, Senator Sheehy- same thing. They've both been very good advocates on it.

Last month, we also told you about a guy who was an intern on the campaign of former Democrat Senator Jon Tester (D-MT). Tester lost to now-Senator Tim Sheehy (R-MT). He wrote an op-ed where he basically exposed how Montanans aren't buying the Dems' attacks anymore.

Here's the part of the writeup that I really got a kick out of. It's when he talks about a phony "Public Lands in Public Hands" rally that the campaign staged in 2024. The campaign bragged on social media that all these Billings residents came out to the rally (and you know the media probably fell for it):

In truth, though, there were almost no real Billings residents at the protest. Among the 30 people who showed up were at least 20 Tester campaign staffers from all over the country and a few interns, myself included. My job that week had been to recruit local Montanan protesters. Though our campaign argued that Tester was the “authentic” Montana candidate, maybe five actual Montanans showed.

Basically the guy then later makes the point on how the Democrats were using the same old tired worn out rhetoric like "Public Lands in Public Hands" and NOBODY was buying it.

Here's the bottom line when it comes to access to our public lands: it is the Democrats and their radical environmentalist buddies who are constantly shutting down access to our public lands. They're the ones shutting down trails, shutting down roads. Remember when they even tried to block motor boats from accessing Flathead Lake? Nuts!