EXCLUSIVE – Former Navy Seal Tim Sheehy, the Republican candidate running to unseat Democrat Sen. Jon Tester in Montana, criticized President Biden’s handling of foreign policy after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Iranian prisoner swap, and “dangerous” military focus.
“We’re encouraging our generals and admirals to focus on social issues instead of combat readiness,” Sheehy told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview of the military’s current trajectory under Biden. “We need to really focus on getting our military back to combat lethality.”
Biden recently issued a $6 billion prisoner swap with Iran in exchange for five American prisoners – a move that prompted pushback from several members of congress including Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., who said it placed a “$1.2-billion bounty on the head of every American hostage.”
Sheehy joined in on the pushback against the major decision.
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Republican Montana Senate candidate and former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy. (Tim Sheehy For Montana)
“It’s shameful. Bottom line,” Sheehy, who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, South America and the Pacific region, said of Biden’s latest decision. “After our Afghan withdrawal disaster in Kabul, which was another shameful foreign policy decision by Blinken and Biden, we shouldn’t be surprised at this.
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For us to continue to enable that, to pay them billions of dollars, to give them access to their billions of dollars of state reserves is doing nothing but empowering one of America’s most persistent and aggressive adversaries. It’s a disgrace to all the American troops, intelligence professionals and service folks who have been working diligently for decades to try to contain the Iranian threat. And it’s really sad to see it happen yet again.”
The GOP candidate said his opinion of Biden’s foreign policy decisions remains “very low,” citing a “lack of accountability” after the Afghanistan withdrawal that took the lives of 13 U.S. service members.
Marines assigned to the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) await a flight to Kabul Afghanistan, at Al Udeied Air Base, Qatar Tuesday, August 17, 2021.
As the military continues its push of social initiatives, such as spending federal dollars on gender reassignment surgeries for transgender identifying veterans and free abortions for service members, Sheehy offered a “simple” solution to refocusing the service.
“The United States military’s job is very simple: close with and kill the enemy. It is to advance American interests through military force when necessary,” the Purple Heart recipient said.
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“Now, we don’t want to use that military force unless we absolutely have to. And we don’t want to send our young boys and girls overseas unless there’s a very good reason to do so. However, we must always be equipping our military and ensuring that what we’re equipping them with, how we’re manning them all aligns with their mission, which is to close with and kill the enemy and advance America’s interest overseas. And focusing on social experimentation, social initiatives at the expense of combat readiness is very dangerous.”
The White House, NSC and State Department did not immediately respond to a Fox News Digital request for reaction to Sheehy’s criticism.
