In northern Kentucky, in this piece of America wedged between the Ohio River and the conservative suburbs of Cincinnati, voters in the 4th district spent months watching, hypnotized, the same television spots. Donald Trump denounced an elected official “disloyal”. Veterans in uniform accused Thomas Massie of betraying the Maga movement. The local channels didn’t broadcast much else anymore. Last night, Massie lost his Republican primary in Kentucky. Fourteen years in Congress and swept away by Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL almost unknown but personally supported by Trump. Massie, an engineer trained at MIT, a libertarian whose obsession is controlling public spending, had committed the unforgivable: questioning the White House on the federal budget, criticizing the war against Iran, and above all persisting in stirring up the Epstein files.
The signal reaches far beyond the Midwest. Massie was not an obscure deputy of this diagonal of the American void. For fourteen years, he was a national figure in the Republican Party, the kind of elected official that East Coast journalists call at half past midnight when they want a Republican voice critical of Trump, someone who had little taste for the rhetoric of the White House, especially on foreign policy. Between the renegade and the free man. Popular beyond his district, respected within his camp.
To overcome it, it took $32 million. In this constituency known to be solidly Republican, where the real issue was not the November election but the political survival of Massie, the most expensive primary for the House of Representatives in American history took place. Trump wanted a show of force, an exemplary punishment. He got it.
A traitor according to Trump
For months, the president had made Massie a personal target. Trump called him a traitor. On his own network, Truth Social, he called him a” jerk “of “little strike”of “worst Republican elected official in the history of Congress”. Pete Hegseth, head of the Pentagon, even came to campaign against him in Kentucky, an extremely rare occurrence for a serving Secretary of War.
Trump has put his name in the matter and his reputation as a kingmaker. Above all, he put in money – or rather, he let others put in money for him. Pro-Trump groups and several pro-Israeli organizations (including AIPAC, the Republican Jewish Coalition) poured millions into crushing the incumbent congressman. Several billionaires, including fund manager Paul Singer and Miriam Adelson, widow of megadonor Sheldon Adelson, have funded the Trumpist super PAC “Maga KY,” created specifically to take down Massie.
Trump has above all shown that no amount of sympathy protects a Republican who has entered into open conflict with him
Trump, who many observers thought no longer had control over the Republicans, methodically locked down the GOP. The Republicans who challenged it after January 6, or on certain sensitive votes, fell one after the other. On Saturday, Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy (one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Trump during his impeachment following the assault on the Capitol) finished third in his primary with less than 25% of the vote. Eliminated, humiliated!
MP Lauren Boebert, until now a radical figure in the Maga movement, sometimes to the point of caricature, dared to challenge Trump by campaigning for Massie in Kentucky. The response was immediate: Trump launched a call on Truth Social for candidates for the primary against her in her own district in Colorado. Boebert responded that she had no regrets: “I knew the risks. I remain and will remain America First, America Always, and Maga. »
It would be wrong to see Massie’s fall as that of a eccentric libertarian. On guns or immigration, he voted like a hard conservative. But in the Trump version of the GOP, that is no longer always enough. In Kentucky, Trump above all showed that no capital sympathy, even after fourteen years in Congress, now protects a Republican who has entered into open conflict with him.
