Montana Senator Steve Daines called in to the KGVO Newsmakers line on Thursday to talk about a number of subjects, but primarily about the tragic shootings in Texas that took 21 lives, including 19 school children and two teachers.

After expressing his shock and grief, Daines referenced his own daughter, who is an elementary school teacher in Montana.

“You know, this hits close to home,” began Senator Daines. “Our daughter is a fourth grade teacher in Montana and she goes to school every day teaching those kids. You'd think that when a parent drops a child off at school, they assume they’re going to be able to pick them up at four o'clock when the day is over and not get a call from law enforcement about this kind of horrible evil act.”

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Daines, a conservative Republican and NRA member, described the scene as he walked to the Senate chamber not long after the shootings had occurred and was confronted by the media.

“Peter literally, within a couple hours after this news broke, I was walking the hallways here in the U.S. Senate going down to vote,” he said. “I was mobbed by the mainstream media, the liberal media, immediately asking me about what gun control measures we need to take to try to solve this problem. How awful, as parents were just literally being notified of the loss of a loved one, and the left is running down and politicizing this. It's just so wrong on so many fronts.”

Daines further described his reaction to the media on that day.

“First I just told them, it was almost like ‘back off’,” he said. “This is a time to grieve and respect the families who just received the worst news you can ever receive in your lifetime. I mean, the pain of something like this will pass on to a generation or more and that never goes away for parents who have lost children. There's nothing more heart wrenching. You're never ever supposed to bury your child. Just like please give the family some space, and give our country some space to grieve about this.”

Another topic Senator Daines discussed was a letter that he and fellow Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas sent to President Biden, asking that he withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO), and explained why.

“The World Health Organization has spent the last two years acting basically as an arm and extension of the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “They covered up what was going on in Wuhan with the COVID pandemic. Had the WHO and the Chinese government been transparent with the world, we could have gotten our arms wrapped around what was going on there, and perhaps stopped what turned out to be a global pandemic.”

Daines also discussed the effects of inflation on Montanans and his contentious hearing with Interior Secretary Haaland over her evasive responses about wolves and Grizzly bears in Montana.

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