It wasn’t intentional, but KGVO scored a political hat trick on Thursday with live interviews featuring Senator Steve Daines, Congressman Matt Rosendale and Governor Greg Gianforte in successive hours all in one Montana Morning News show.

In the six o’clock hour, Senator Daines called in to the KGVO Newsmakers Line and began by relating how U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson stood him up for a personal meeting.

“We had a meeting scheduled for this past Tuesday,” began Daines. “I was very much looking forward to sitting down and talking to her about the issues and the philosophies that matter so much to Montanans; about the Second Amendment; about the role of judiciary; or does she want to be a jurist or does she want to be a legislator? I mean, there are some really important questions here. And then the White House said, I'm sorry, we can't meet this week, and they proposed meeting next week after the votes would have already begun. So basically, they pushed us off.”

Daines said at that point, he decided to vote ‘no’ on Judge Jackson’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I made my decision and I'll be voting no, for several reasons,” he said. “I looked at her record, and I am concerned that she does not understand the limited role of the judiciary and the separation of powers. She has consistently given lighter sentences for violent criminals as a judge, including child sex offenders. In fact, for those involved with child pornography, she just consistently gives light sentences.”

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Regarding his recent trip to Poland, Daines said he traveled with several other U.S. Senators to within sight of the border with Ukraine and was deeply impressed with the heroic female soldiers.

“We had a meeting with four leaders from Ukraine who came from Kiev,” he said. “There were four women who drove across Western Ukraine and came across the border and met us in Rydzyna Poland literally at a Hilton Garden Inn, where they sat down and met with us. They were absolutely some of the toughest, bravest most concise, articulate leaders I've ever spoken to, and I made the comment one of my colleagues is if the Ukrainian men are half as tough as these Ukrainian women, God helped the Russians.”

In the seven o’clock hour, KGVO spoke with Montana’s current lone Congressman Matt Rosendale led off with his efforts to get the federal government to reopen lease sales for gas and oil.

“This administration has ignored court orders in reference to leasing the federal properties for oil and gas development,” said Rosendale. “Basically this piece of legislation forces them to just uphold the laws and get back to a quarterly sale for leasing these properties.”

Rosendale said the Biden administration is doing all it can to keep from obeying the law.

“They've canceled the leasing,” he said. “They have slow walked the permits, and now they're putting all kinds of pressure on the financial institutions so that the oil and gas developers are having problems getting the resources necessary they need to generate the money that's needed to drill these wells.”

Since Montana has more veterans that almost all the other states, Rosendale was also concerned with news that several smaller VA clinics have been slated for closing.

“There are three clinics over in eastern Montana, including Miles City that they are looking at closing and so my letter to the Veterans Administration is to give me good information about how many people that this is going to affect,” he said. “I want someone to explain to me if they're going to take that clinic away or if they're going to close that down, how are people going to receive their benefits?”

Then, in the eight o’clock hour, Governor Greg Gianforte has his turn on the KGVO Newsmakers Line.

He related his trip to eastern Montana where he celebrated National Agriculture Week.

“Agriculture is the number one industry in Montana and we celebrated it last week with Agriculture Week,” said Governor Gianforte. “We started it off with Meat Day last Sunday and it was our second annual meat day. But, you know, I don't have to tell you Peter every day is meat day in Montana. So that was a good kickoff.”

The governor said he has been working to help Montana meat producers gain more revenue.

“There's really a monopoly on meat processors, and they squeeze the producers and they play one off against another, so it's just not fair to our ranchers that work so hard,” he said. “So we've made it a priority to increase processing capacity here in Montana, so the Montana brand can stay on these steaks and ground meat as it goes to market.”

He touted a game changing new agreement that will allow Montana beef producers to process and ship their products anywhere in the country.

“The CIS (Cooperative Interstate Shipment) agreement is an agreement between the state and the USDA that allows state inspected processing plants to ship meat to any state in the country,” he said. “Up until this point beef processed at state inspected plants had to stay inside the state. Now we can ship anywhere in the country.”

One more project the governor has tackled has to do with the onerous amount of regulations in state government.

“We’ve got 15,000 regulations in the state, with 60,000 ‘shall not’, ‘must not’ and ‘prohibited froms’ in the code,” he said. “But here's the kicker. You know how much education you need to read Montana regulations based on the linguistic analysis we did? A high school diploma’s not enough; a college degree’s, not enough; a PhD is not enough. You need 20 years of education to read the Montana regulations and understand them. You have to have a PhD plus postdoctoral work. So, we’re fixing that.”

KGVO appreciates Senator Daines, Congressman Rosendale and Governor Gianforte for taking the time to call and speak directly to our listeners, and to communicate with our website readers.

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