GOP Rep. Thomas Massie lost to challenger Ed Gallrein on Tuesday in one of the most expensive primary contests in history, and it wasn’t especially close. Gallrein, a retired Navy SEAL, beat the incumbent by a vote of about 55 percent to 45 percent.
Yet by his telling, Massie’s real opponents were something much bigger. At a fundamental level, the irascible Kentucky libertarian pitted himself against President Donald Trump as well as a collection of forces, real and imagined, that Massie believes are steering Trump’s presidency: the “Zionists,” the “military-industrial complex,” AIPAC, and the “Epstein class.” His defeat is a vindication of Trump’s power, and also a victory for moral hygiene within the GOP. He confirmed as much in his concession speech Tuesday with a joke aimed at Israel: “I would have come out sooner but I had to call my opponent and concede, and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.”
As recently as 2024, Massie would have seemed an odd standard-bearer for what’s now known as the “America First” wing of the right: a cohort of politicians like former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, media figures such as Tucker Carlson, and an unknown number of voters, all of whom have broken with Trump over his alliance with Israel and his handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files. Before he became a populist conspiracist, Massie was a libertarian from central casting. He was first elected to represent Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District in 2012, when the enthusiasm of the Tea Party movement still lingered.
