Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) lost his Kentucky primary on Tuesday to Trump-backed former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein. Ahead of the vote, Trump described Massie as "disloyal," a "bum," and "worse" than Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who also lost his primary vote on Saturday after Trump endorsed his challenger. Massie had been in office for 14 years.
Massie told Tucker Carlson (Right bias) a few weeks ago that "at least" 95 percent of Gallrein's funding had come from "the Israeli lobby." On Thursday, Massie introduced a bill that would amend the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and require those who work for AIPAC to register as foreign agents.
Voices on the left focused on how the race demonstrated Trump’s control over the Republican party, while voices on the right focused more on what they perceived as Massie’s antisemitism.
A Bloomberg (Lean Left) columnist wrote, “Massie’s defeat may be the end of GOP dissent — at least among elected officials who have to face the voters again. But it’s not the end for Massie. He has more than six months left in his term and is likely to continue making trouble for Trump…Massie exposed the sorry condition of the Republican Party and how voters have abandoned their conservative core principles for allegiance to a narcissist. But he also tapped into a truth. Most Americans are yearning for something else — and that could be the ultimate cost for Trump.”
Noah Rothman (Lean Right) said in the National Review (Right), “what Massie and his fans were attempting to launder into the discourse was the implied claim that his deep-pocketed adversaries were beholden more to Israel’s interests than America’s…If there is a ‘chilling effect’ here, it will also be one that reinforces the desirable stigma around antisemitic agitation…There is the “chilling” of protected but unpopular speech by governmental entities, and then there are valuable normative taboos that are enforced only by virtue of the number of people who silently observe them.”
”Representative Doan is right to fret the extent to which the president’s grip on his party will reinforce the GOP’s pro-Trump omertà. But that’s only one element of the discourse that the voters of Kentucky’s fourth district consigned to the freezer. ”
A New York Times Opinion (Left) writer said, “It should also serve as a vivid and very expensive reminder, especially to Republicans, of how little Mr. Trump cares about the current or future well-being of his chosen party. Destroying the G.O.P. might suit his purposes even better…Instigating expensive primary brawls, Mr. Trump did the Democrats’ work for them, forcing his own team to burn money unnecessarily. And not because he wanted to produce the strongest general election candidate possible. This was about flexing on his enemies.”
The Washington Free Beacon (Right) featured a piece that read, “These fans of the soon-to-be-former congressman (and other lunatics) will now be tasked with determining which supernatural force bears more blame for Massie's defeat—Donald Trump or the Jews? A rhetorical question, of course. As the antisemites have certainly realized by now, even someone as handsome and powerful as Trump is not impervious to Jewish influence. The real question is whether they will ultimately grasp the futility of waging a lame crusade against an omnipotent cult that controls the weather, the space lasers, and the White House…Congratulations to Trump on this deserved victory, and for showing Democrats how to handle the riffraff.”
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