Daines Joins KBZK In-Studio For Halloween Special Segment

• October 31, 2025

U.S. SENATE - U.S. Senator Steve Daines today joined KBZK in studio for a special Halloween segment and gave the latest updates on the Schumer Shutdown.

Watch the full interview HERE.

Daines on the Schumer Shutdown:

This will be the longest shutdown in American history. It looks like the Democrats want to keep it shut down into the next week. There's a big election on Tuesday in New York for that mayor race, there's a New Jersey governor's race. There's Virginia's governor's race. We're told they're going to keep it shut down at least through Tuesday because they want to stir up their folks to get out and vote, unfortunately, because there's real people getting hurt. As you mentioned here earlier in the news stories, 77,000 Montanans loose their SNAP benefits starting this weekend. It's about 40 million Americans lose their SNAP benefits. So, this is should not be about political gamesmanship. This should be about coming back together again. And I'm cautiously hopeful that because of some talks that just began yesterday, maybe we'll get a handful of Democrats to join us. We need five democrats to join us. The democrats have voted against a clean CR, that means temporary funding bill, 14 times. [A clean CR is] something they did 11 times when Joe Biden was President. I think they're angry with President Trump. Don't express that anger by shutting the government down. Let's get deal done and move forward…we're going to see air traffic delays. Our troops aren't going to be getting paid. Your TSA agents, air traffic controllers. This is political gamesmanship. It shouldn't happen. Don't take the government hostage as part of the negotiations here to try and get an outcome because you're upset about the elections last year.

Daines explained his Halloween Bobcats Jersey:

Good to be back in my hometown. Happy Halloween- go Cats! 41 is the legacy uniform of the Bobcats. We [Montana] were the 41^st state admitted to the union. In fact, our birthday's coming up- November 8^th. The 136^th year, since 1889. every year the Cats assign a Montanan who gets to wear this jersey and Paul Brott, of Billings West High, defensive end is it wearing this year. So, I thought it would be the right jersey to wear.

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Contact: Matt Lloyd, Gabby Wiggins