Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) in 2018 praised an apocalyptic Pearl Jam concert poster that depicted former President Donald Trump dead, according to his 2020 book, Grounded: A Rural Democrat’s Fight to Unite America.
Tester’s last reelection campaign enflamed controversy when a Pearl Jam poster for a get-out-the-vote concert promoting the Montana Democrat featured a dead Donald Trump and an American bald eagle eating the remains of his corpse. Tester is close friends with Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament, who designed the poster.
WATCH — GOP Senate Candidate Tim Sheehy on How to Beat Jon Tester in Montana:
M. Perdie, J. Knudsen / Breitbart News
Tester’s campaign, not Tester himself, disavowed the poster, only after the media shed light on the controversy. Two weeks after the literature was revealed, Tester has yet to personally disavow it.
Even though the 2018 Tester campaign condemned the violent imagery in the poster, the battleground Senate Democrat appeared to enjoy the artwork, per his 2020 book, Grounded: A Rural Democrat’s Fight to Unite a Divided America.
The Washington Examiner found that Tester “actually loved” the Pearl Jam poster.
“As soon as word spread of how wild the posters were, fans stood in line for hours to buy them all up at $35 a pop. Christie showed me a copy, gritting her teeth,” Tester wrote.
“And there’s an unmistakable image of me, flying on my tractor above the fire and fury, waving with my two-fingered left hand,” Tester added.
He said, “‘This is so … interesting,’ I told Christie. Though the poster was off message, I didn’t want to admit to her that I actually loved it. None of us knew about the posters before we saw them on sale at the concert.”
Tester went on to write that the “big news” was not the concert, but the “artwork.”
The revelation about Tester’s praise of the violent, anti-Trump artwork follows after the recent shooting of former President Trump.
Tester wrote that he “was appalled by the violence at the political rally” and called for an investigation into the shooting.
Tester has also made violent calls to attack Trump.
In 2019, Tester said that the best way to beat the 45th president is to “punch him in the face.”
Tester said, “I don’t think, even in states where Donald Trump won big, that it does you any good running away from Donald Trump. I think you need to go back and punch him in the face. I mean, the truth is this guy is bad for this country”:
“Tester’s violent rhetoric toward President Trump is sick,” said Mike Berg, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, (NRSC), said in a statement.
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter @SeanMoran3.
