Montana’s GOP Leaders Suddenly Bailed (w/ Ryan Busse)
Bulwark Takes
The Bulwark
4.7 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 8 March 2026
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Lauren Egan is joined by Ryan Busse, a Democratic candidate for Congress in Montana’s 1st District, for his take on the stunning shakeup in Montana politics. Within days, Rep. Ryan Zinke announced he won’t seek reelection and Sen. Steve Daines revealed he’s retiring, throwing the state’s political landscape into turmoil. Busse talks about why he believes the race is now wide open and how Democrats can compete in a deeply red state. A former firearms industry executive who later broke with the industry, Busse also explains his unusual political journey and why he thinks economic issues will decide the next election.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey guys, it's Lauren Egan here at the Bullwork. There's been a lot of political news this week out of |
| 0:04.7 | Montana, and I'm joined today by Ryan Bussie to talk through it all. Ryan is running the Democratic |
| 0:10.3 | primary for Congress in Montana's first district, which is currently represented by Republican |
| 0:15.7 | Ryan Zinke. But Zinke announced earlier this week that he's retiring. And just a few days after Zinke said he wouldn't run again, |
| 0:23.2 | Montana Senator Steve Daines also said that he was going to retire. |
| 0:27.2 | So there's a lot of shakeup going on in Montana politics this week. |
| 0:30.5 | Ryan, just really quickly, I want to get your reaction to these pair of retirement announcements. |
| 0:34.5 | Were you surprised what's been the reaction from folks on the ground? |
| 0:38.0 | Who knew Montana was a center of political universe this week. I know, right? |
| 0:42.6 | Yeah, they're dropping like flies out here. Yeah, it was, honestly, it was shot. The Zincky thing |
| 0:49.3 | was not super shocking. It had been rumored that his heart really wasn't in it. And I had personally |
| 0:55.9 | suspected that something might be up. So it was a little surprising, but not shocking. The Dane's thing, |
| 1:01.3 | a U.S. Senator, a sitting U.S. Senator with seniority, pulls that kind of. And for those who |
| 1:06.5 | don't know, he waited until four minutes before the filing deadline sneaks in his hand-picked successor, |
| 1:15.0 | I guess, who they've coordinated. A guy, a U.S. attorney who nobody in the state knows. There |
| 1:19.1 | aren't 10 people in the state who knows who this guy is, slipped him in last second. And also, |
| 1:24.7 | because of that, because of the last minute thing, lots of Dems didn't file to run. They thought, you know, it would be tough to run against a sitting U.S. senators. So it's really, it's quite a shakeup. And the right side of the Republican Party pretty hot about this because, you know, sort of deprives everybody of democracy here. So yeah, it's been quite a thing. Yeah, incredibly |
| 1:44.6 | Democratic of him. Oh, yeah. I want to talk about your political background a little bit. You ran for |
| 1:50.9 | governor in 2024 and lost. I'm curious what challenges you saw running statewide as a Democrat, |
| 1:58.0 | because this is the place where Democrats used to win. Obviously, there was Governor Steve Bullock, John Tester was a senator from Montana. |
| 2:04.8 | What do you think has changed in the past couple of years? |
| 2:08.6 | Yeah, so I guess everybody watching this, I'm going to, I want to give you a little bit of hope. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Bulwark, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Bulwark and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.