An Obituary For Ryan Zinke’s Political Career

A fond farewell to everyone’s favorite “Teddy Roosevelt Republican”

The purpose of the GOP is to steal from the American people and give to billionaires. And perhaps no recent Republican politician has embodied that fraud better than Ryan Zinke. The U.S. Representative for Montana’s western district just announced that he will retire at the end of his current term. Let’s look back on highlights from Zinke’s career.

Zinke first rose to prominence on the national stage when President Trump appointed him Secretary of the Interior in 2017. Immediately upon his swearing in, Zinke climbed onto a horse named after the incredibly racist portrayal of Indigenous people in “The Lone Ranger,” and rode it through Washington D.C., to the welcome ceremony he held for himself on the steps of the Department of the Interior building.

As soon as he was in office, Zinke commissioned a “special flag,” he then ordered his staff to raise and lower as he entered and left the building.

Zinke’s personal office at DOI was the location of one of his early scandals, when he embarked on a high six-figure redecoration project that included a set of custom double doors that cost taxpayers $139,000 all on their own.

Those were just the beginning of a series of high profile personal embarrassments. During a photo op, Zinke was caught unintentionally wearing a cowboy hat the wrong way around. Then, while promoting a National Park children’s book, he also wore the official uniform hat of the National Park Service backwards, a symbolic gesture park rangers took special issue with, since he was, at the time, involved in an effort to dismantle the very system of public lands those rangers were charged with protecting.

Then, when my colleague Elliot Woods profiled Zinke for Outside in late 2017, his article ended with this paragraph:

“As Zinke and I casted over the ice-cold water, I noticed something funny about his setup. He kept struggling to strip line out of the bottom of the reel. For a while, I thought he was simply having trouble concentrating on our conversation while casting. No, there was something wrong, and when I asked him to stand for a portrait, I finally saw what the problem was. He had rigged his reel backward, so that the line was coming out of the top of the reel. Every so often when he went to strip line out, he would grasp air where the line should’ve been. Seems like an inconsequential thing, but in Montana, it’s everything.”

Zinke also posted a now-deleted video of himself on Twitter casting a fly rod as if it were a bait rod.

Gaffs like these were just a sideshow to the main event that marked Zinke’s short tenure running DOI. By the time the Trump administration fired him 2018, Interior’s office of Inspector General had opened 18 separate investigations into his conduct. Those ranged from alleged retaliation against a whistleblower, and violations of the Hatch Act, to using his official office to influence a real estate deal Haliburton was conducting in Whitefish, Montana, near the house Zinke inherited from his parents.

That house is particularly relevant to Zinke’s story.

During the late ‘90s, Zinke was forced to reimburse the Navy $211 after it was discovered that he’d misappropriated travel funds to fly himself and a couple of his buddies out to Whitefish to fix up that house.

While that may sound like a minor infraction, it was part of a larger pattern of behavior that eventually led to Zinke being separated from his SEAL team, prevented from seeking rank beyond Commander, and put on a path towards early retirement.

As Zinke is always the first to tell people, he served as a Navy SEAL. Graduating from the Navy’s Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL school is a real achievement, and would be the kind of resume builder that could have delivered Zinke an impressive political career, if he hadn’t used it as part of what his former commanding officer called, “dissimulation of facts regarding his career.”

The very fact that a member of the famously tight-lipped special operations community found it necessary to publish an op-ed calling into question Zinke’s own telling of his military career is shocking. But it apparently wasn’t enough to put the Congressperson back on the right track.

“Why is Ryan Zinke constantly telling us in his prime time television ads that he was awarded two bronze stars for combat?” Asked a fellow SEAL veteran in a 2014 letter to the Bigfork Eagle. “Anyone who was ever in combat knows that our military does not award Bronze Stars for combat. It awards them for valorous acts which take place during combat.”

“Zinke has never led troops in combat and has never been awarded a medal for valor for doing so,” that letter continues. “Zinke’s two bronze stars were awarded for meritorious service for his support services to SEAL teams assigned to him.”

Again, the fact that Zinke served in a variety of staff roles within the special warfare command structure would be impressive, if he wasn’t constantly mis-representing himself as a combat veteran, which it appears he is not. And if he was, releasing an unredacted version of his DD-214 (his military service record), would silence critics. That he has not indicates something more embarrassing than stolen valor must be in there.

Let’s go back to the house Zinke owns in Whitefish, the one he got run out of office over when it emerged he was improperly pressuring a defense contractor worth $35 billion to incrementally increase the value of by purchasing a nearby property.

In 2022, as Zinke was again running for Congress to represent Montana’s western district, a Politico investigation found that Zinke and his wife actually live at their property in Santa Barbara, California. The couple declare that home as their primary residence on their taxes, and use its address on fundraising invitations. Meanwhile, according to the report, that house in Whitefish is used only to file campaign paperwork, and as the primary mailing address for several of the shell companies Zinke uses to raise money in Montana.

And even while Zinke maintains he lives in Whitefish, not Santa Barbara, he was photographed arriving at a fundraiser in that town last summer driving a luxury SUV complete with California license plates.

Ever since beginning his successful campaign to re-join the House of Representatives, Zinke has sought to rehabilitate his reputation with voters. A reputation ruined not only by his embarrassing public behavior and flagrant penny grifting, but by the fact that he ordered the largest reduction in public lands protections this country has ever seen while tasked with the job of protecting those lands.

Last year, after public backlash forced Senators Mike Lee and Steve Daines to remove their provision to sell 3.3 million acres of public land and authorize the future sale of hundreds of millions more as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Zinke issued a press release claiming credit.

This is very much a part of Zinke’s habit of, “dissimulation of facts,” identified by his Navy Commander three decades ago. Not only was that provision removed in the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources while Zinke serves in the House of Representatives, but Zinke is not even a part of the House Committee on Natural Resources, which would have debated that section had it ever reached that chamber, which it did not.

Zinke went on to use that lie to establish the Bipartisan Public Lands Caucus, which has since done exactly nothing to prevent Republican attempts to destroy America’s unique system of public lands, but has been the subject of multiple press releases singing Zinke’s praises.

Zinke has plans to end his career on a high note. Ever since his short-lived tenure behind those $139,000 doors, the former Secretary of the Interior has been working to help the Chilean billionaire Luskin family get the permits it needs to build a heavily-polluting mine in the headwaters of Minnesota’s Boundary Waters. That mine will dump copious amounts of sulfuric acid into America’s most popular Wilderness area, forever destroying its famously pure water, and the abundant fish populations that supports, all while giving away the state’s copper to China.

Despite all his rhetoric to the contrary, Zinke was the Congressperson who successfully whipped the votes that measure needed to pass the House.

According to Zinke, he’s retiring due to injuries sustained while pushing paper in the Navy. Wait, that’s not quite how he tells it.

Zinke’s retirement letter begins by clapping himself on the back for all his achievements:

“Battles are not fought alone, and with your support we have unleashed America’s energy potential, removed excessive regulation, lowered taxes, passed the Great American Outdoors Act to repair and preserve our National Parks and Forests, and saved our treasured public lands from being sold to the highest bidder.”

There’s more of that, but the relevant portion is this:

“I have quietly undergone multiple surgeries since I returned to Congress and unfortunately face several more immediately after leaving office. The injuries sustained from a career in Special Operations are not immediately life threatening, but the repair cannot be deferred any longer and recovery will require considerable time.”

Since we clearly can’t trust a word Zinke speaks, my best guess is simply that he sees the wipeout coming for Republicans in this November’s mid-terms, and wants to devote his remaining time in office looking for a lucrative gig at a lobbying firm.

Ryan Busse, the frontrunner in the Democratic primary for Zinke’s seat agrees.

“Everywhere I’ve been, voters, including Republican voters, are telling me they’re scared to death of losing healthcare, they hate the tariffs, and they really don’t like protecting pedophiles,” Busse tells me. “Zinke knows the MAGA agenda is deeply unpopular and he knows I’m going to beat him.”

Despite his best efforts at destroying the Boundary Waters on their behalf, one place where Zinke is unlikely to find employment is at the firm representing the Chilean mining conglomerate. That’s The Bernhardt Group, named after its founder, David, who stepped in as Secretary of the Interior upon Zinke’s dismissal.

I once asked Bernhardt his opinion of Zinke, to which he responded, “That man is a fraud.”

Top photo:DOI

A journalist with more than two decades of experience working around the world, Wes Siler is here to cut through the outrage and disinformation to bring you the factual, insightful, actionable reporting you need to understand what’s going on. Upgrading to a paid subscription supports this reporting, and buys personal access to Wes, who will help you save money on gear, and prepare for real life.