Senator Tim Sheehy

speaker

142 appearances 2 recordings 1 series first heard May 2025 last heard 7 Jan

Senator Tim Sheehy’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.

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The Ben Shapiro Show · Memorial Day: Remembering The Fallen w/ Sen. Tim Sheehy · 26 May 2025 podcast

is we usually have to absorb a lot of pain and a lot of losses before we change our behavior and last time we had great power competition in the pacific we got our ass kicked for the first year there's a lot of ships at the bottom of the ocean and a lot of dead americans because we were not ready to face off against this threat right now china has been preparing they are more prepared than we are we've seen a massive atrophy of our base infrastructure in the pacific and most importantly our ability to build replace and maintain our naval vessels which have been the guarantors of freedom of navigation around the entire world for the last 80

here. So I'm very concerned, Ben. I know that many of my former, sorry, many of my comrades in the Senate are equally concerned on both sides of the aisle, I might add. Senator Tim Kaine from Virginia has been a great voice of reason, too, in this saying we need to make sure our Navy's ready. So we've got a lot of work to do.

I think Pete's up to the job and the president has very clearly said it's time for us to get ready.

You're absolutely right. And that's something that Americans don't like to think of ourselves as a military empire of projecting force around the world. We like to think of ourselves as, hey, we want to mind our own business here at home and we'll deal with a problem if it comes to us. And that's certainly a noble cause. And I think for the most part, we all agree with that.

But the truth is, unfortunately, we have to be ready to defend our interests globally. And frankly, that goes back to the beginning in our Constitution. Our founding fathers in our Constitution stated very clearly that we are constitutionally required to provide and maintain a Navy. And the reason why is because building a Navy takes time.

It's expensive, it's hard, and the skills around a Navy take years to develop. And an Army is, of course, an equally important capability to have, But especially at that time, our founders were concerned about a standing army in America becoming used as a force of tyranny by a runaway government.

Whereas the Navy was understood that as a mercantile republic, we had to have open sea lanes available to keep our businesses running, to keep our economy strong. And as you correctly pointed out, 250 years on, very little has changed.

The technology is different, the products are different, but the reality is we have to be able to move products into and out of our marketplace, and so does the rest of the world. And right now, frankly, for the last eight years, the entire global economy has rested on the bedrock of freedom of navigation that sits on the backs of the U.S. Navy. So we have to be ready to defend those interests.

And right now, as we've seen in the Red Sea over the past year and a half, since October 7th, Although it's a small example of what can happen worldwide, we're very lucky to have the Navy we have. But unfortunately, the Red Sea is a tiny speck on the map compared to the Indo-Pacific region.

And we're not ready to spread that capability across the whole region the way China is rapidly pacing towards.

Also, my mom says when I was about three years old, I was running around the woods with a stick for a gun. So she said, I don't know why, but you always knew you were going to do it. But it's interesting that there was an image stuck in my head when I was about five years old. We were invading Kuwait during the first Gulf War. And I was sitting on the floor playing with trucks and toys.

And it was, you know, the old school CNN back in the early days of 24 hour news. And I saw this image and it was a night vision video of an American soldier running through the desert and he dropped down on his chest to fire his weapon.

And I realized it occurred to me even at that young age, at four or five years old, that there was somebody half a world away fighting for our country and keeping me safe all the way back home. And even as a small child, I understood that concept that there's somebody deployed overseas in the middle of the night,

wearing body armor with a rifle, fighting the fight so that we could be safe back at home. And that concept for me was something that was very powerful. And I said, you know what, I want to be a part of that. When I grew up, I want to be the guy on the wall protecting this beautiful way of life that we have. And of course, that stuck with me.

met my wife at the naval academy we both served she was a marine i was a seal and we spent uh our 20s deployed all over the world fighting for this country and we're proud to do it so it's it's a really special day memorial day is of course veterans days in the fall focusing on veterans memorial day is focused on on those who we've lost focused on of course the memorials that have been built to to honor those lives uh and there's again nothing nothing greater we can do to honor those lives and then simply take a few moments to remember

that all the great things we have in this country were not perfect. We never have been. We never will be. But this is about the best damn governance experience and experiment that's ever happened in the history of mankind. And frankly, we have to preserve it and protect it.

And the only way we can really do that is if we have those people who are willing to make that sacrifice all over the world for all of us. So it's a special day. Thanks for taking a moment to honor it for all of us.

Well, I have these bracelets that we're actually all the time, 24-7. And I used to have one. But as the names have grown over the years, they all carry names of teammates and friends that I lost overseas. And actually, I started wearing these all the time because I realized when I came home from the wars, I did about five deployments all over the world that very few people at home

just didn't think every day. To them, the wars didn't exist. They didn't affect them day to day. And for me, it was very important that we remember those names. So the name I always at the top of my list is a guy named Ben Tiffner. He was a special forces captain in the U.S. Army.

I actually didn't know Ben that well or for even that long, but he was an early mentor of mine in the special operations community when I was going through ranger training before I became a SEAL. And he was a guy that took the time out of his busy schedule to help train me as a young teenager as I became enmeshed in the world of special operations.

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