On the very day Donald Trump supporter Cesar Sayoc was arrested for sending pipe bombs to Democrats and the media, Donald Trump Jr. was in Montana calling Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) a “piece of garbage.”
Trump Jr., who headlined a rally for Tester’s GOP Senate rival Matt Rosendale and Rep. Greg Gianforte (R), went after Tester over Ronny Jackson’s nomination to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs earlier this year.
Trump’s eldest son accused Tester, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, of putting out “all sorts of baseless accusations” on the orders of Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.).
“To go after and try to assassinate with no proof, no basis, no nothing, a good man simply because my father wanted to elevate him and put him in charge of an organization,” Trump Jr. fumed. “When Jon Tester, who is this lap dog, does that, what happened? Where’s the accountability to Jon Tester who did that? Because that makes you a piece of garbage in my mind, and it should to all of you and anyone I know in this state.”
Trump then put in a plug for Rosendale who is running slightly behind Tester in the polls with less than two weeks before the election.
“You have the chance to unseat someone who plays the game, he pretends he’s one thing and he does the opposite,” he said. “To go out there on TV and attack a good man. That to me is a character flaw.”
Trump Jr. did not mention that his father often went on TV and attacked his opponents, including Sen. John McCain who he famously proclaimed was no war hero “because he was captured.”
Tester led the opposition against Jackson, who served as White House physician from 2013 to March 2018, when Trump nominated him to head the VA earlier this year.
Jackson’s nomination was torpedoed after former members of the White House medical staff came forward anonymously with a variety of serious allegations, which Tester made public in embarrassing detail.
During an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Tester said “the word is” that on overseas trips Jackson would freely hand out drugs such as Ambien and Provigil, which help people fall asleep and wake up.
“These are called controlled substances for a reason,” Tester said. “That’s the reports we got from the twenty-some people who got a hold of us and said, ‘We have a problem, this doctor has a problem, because he hands out prescriptions like candy.’”
“In fact in the White House they call him the candy man,” Tester added.
Tester and Rosendale are locked in a tight Senate battle, with Tester leading his GOP challenger by 4.5 points in the RealClearPolitics polling index with less than two weeks before the election.
Trump Jr. also campaigned with Rep. Greg Gianforte, who his dad praised at a campaign rally for body slamming a reporter in the 2016 campaign.
This one the same day that the suspected MAGA bomber Cesar Sayoc was arrested in Florida.
Sayor’s capture was a significant breakthrough in a case that has gripped the country in the days leading up to the midterm elections.
All together, 12 crude explosive devices were found since Monday, sent through the mail to a host of Democrats and other prominent figures who have been among Trump’s most vocal detractors.
The packages — virtually identical in plain manila envelopes — have been addressed to former President Barack Obama; former Vice President Joe Biden; former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; Representative Maxine Waters of California; former Attorney General Eric Holder; John Brennan, a former C.I.A. director, the actor Robert De Niro; and George Soros, the billionaire Democratic donor.