Montana's Republican Senator Tim Sheehy (R-MT) is quite the interesting guy, with an interesting background: Cattle rancher, firefighter, Navy Academy graduate, Navy SEAL officer, and the youngest Republican in the United States Senate. His background has lent him some great insights into things like the Trump administration's ongoing detonation of drug boats inbound to the United States from places like Venezuela.
While many of us would already agree that introducing drug smugglers to their new quarters in Davy Jones's Locker is a good thing, Senator Sheehy has come out with the legal and practical replies to the people who are complaining that we should be capturing, not exploding, these smugglers and other maritime targets like them. Watch:
.@TimSheehyMT: "To go after the brave men and women in uniform who are conducting these attacks is to indict the very system that was used bipartisanly for the last 24 years. I personally was involved in many of these operations...and the process we have is legally sound. It’s… pic.twitter.com/3helucDpJo
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) December 16, 2025
The senator said:
To go after Admiral Bradley, go after the brave men and women in uniform who are conducting these attacks, is to indict the very system that was used, bipartisanly, for the last 24 years. I personally was involved in many of these operations. From kinetic strikes to direct action operations. And the process we have, is legally sound. It's been supported by legal opinions for a quarter-century now of how we find these people, we fix them, and we finish them. And keep in mind, if we don't drop a bomb, and we decide to interdict, as is being said by many folks we have an obligation to send a team in and interdict. When we make that decision, you're putting our lives at risk. You're putting American lives at risk. Just about a year and a half ago, you remember two SEALS were killed interdicting a vessel at night in the Red Sea.
Interdicting a vessel underway is perhaps the most dangerous mission we have in our entire military inventory. When we task our commanders to go out and attack a vessel underway, that's an incredibly high-risk mission. So when folks say, "Oh, we should be interdicting," that's easy for you to say here in this building, between two cups of cappuccino. It's a lot harder to send that 24-year-old operator out there, who's got a wife and kids, and tell him in the middle of the night, you've got to fast rappel out of a helicopter, scuba dive under a ship, climb up the side of that, and fight your way onto a vessel, because we're more worried about the lives of drug dealers than we are our own people. And that's a high-risk mission.
In any military operation, in any instance where bullets are launched, there's one goal: All our people come home safe. If the bad guys don't, too bad.
Read More: Sen. Schmitt Drops Blistering Clapback to Reporter's Question About Tanker and Drug Boats
Drug Boat Bafflement and Drone Dysphoria - Media Trapped Themselves Trying to Implicate Pete Hegseth
As the senator says, it's always easy for the order-generating types in comfortable offices to piously pronounce that we should be capturing high-speed cigarette boats carrying drugs instead of turning them into ocean fish habitats. They are, almost without exception, without experience in actually doing this kind of work. Senator Sheehy has been there, done that, and has the t-shirt, along with a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. We should understand not only his perspectives and the reasons behind it, but also the experiences of the many like him who have been engaged under difficult circumstances to serve the American people.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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