MINOT — Here’s something I didn’t expect to be writing about today.

Recently, U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale, R-Montana,

dropped out of that state’s Senate race.

In a statement, Rosendale said the “hill was too steep” after several other Montana Republicans — notably U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, Gov. Greg Gianforte and U.S. Rep. Ryan Zinke — lined up behind his primary opponent Tim Sheehy.

The incumbent in the race is Sen. Jon Tester, a Democrat.

But former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp thinks she knows another far more prurient reason for Rosendale dropping out that has nothing to do with political calculus. “Just to gossip a little bit: There’s a reason why Rosendale backed out of that Senate race — the rumor is he impregnated a 20-year-old staff person,” she said on an episode of the Talking Feds podcast.

That is a very specific and very prejudicial thing to say based on nothing more than a rumor.

As you might expect, Rosendale’s campaign refuted the claim and is promising legal action. “This is 100% false and defamatory and former Senator Heitkamp will be hearing from our lawyers soon,” Ron Kovach, a spokesman for Rosendale,

said in a statement provided to Politico.

Since losing a U.S. Senate seat Democrats had held since the Eisenhower administration, most of Heitkamp’s public work has consisted of being a B-list pundit on various cable news shows and podcasts and acting as a sort of

rube whisperer

for Democrats trying to figure out why they can’t win in rural America. Her qualifications for the latter endeavor are dubious, given that her expertise as an expert on rural voters is built on

barely winning

one statewide election in North Dakota in almost 30 years.

Responsible person that I am, I don’t care to speculate about the rumor Heitkamp regurgitated on the podcast. Sex scandals in politics happen with such frequency that they’re cliche, though that’s not a defense for repeating unsubstantiated rumors about them. Nor does it diminish their seriousness when they do happen.

We do have, in the public record, several examples of Heitkamp doing and saying wildly stupid things — from her

outing of sexual assault survivors

during a ham-handed attack on her opponent, Kevin Cramer, during the waning days of her failed 2018 reelection campaign to her decision to use “body language” to judge the veracity of Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s refutation of unsubstantiated claims of sexual assault made against him.

Heitkamp herself said she may be “subject to defamation” for calling actor Gina Carano a “Nazi”

during a 2021 appearance on Real Time with Bill Maher.

Perhaps working in rumor and vicious innuendo runs in the family, given her brother Joel Heitkamp’s body of work as a talk radio host.