The future of the Republican Party was up for grabs in Kentucky&#8217;s 4th Congressional District last night.
It was the most expensive House primary race in history and a bellwether for what comes next inside the GOP.
Thomas Massie versus President Donald Trump. Online versus reality. Woke right versus traditional Trump right.
And Trump won. Reality won.
It turns out the future still belongs to the rational Right.
It belongs to President Trump.
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The race was not particularly close. Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL, was Massie’s opponent.
Massie, of course, has been in Congress since 2012 as a 14-year, seven-term congressman. He was destroyed by Gallrein last night; by 7:45 p.m. Eastern time, it was over. Gallrein got roughly 55% of the vote.
Let’s begin at the beginning. There are a lot of stories, a lot of tales, about what defeated Thomas Massie: that Thomas Massie was defeated by AIPAC money, that Thomas Massie was defeated over his strong opposition to Israel, etc.
That is not what happened. Thomas Massie, who was very popular in his district — a district that happens to have gone for Trump by 35 to 40 points in the last several election cycles — lost that seat because he decided that he wanted to go to war with President Trump on policy and also personally.
That&#8217;s the reality.
Thirty-three million dollars was spent in the race. Massie outspent Gallrein directly, and then super PACs got involved. Supporters of President Trump, people who are pro-Israel, spent some $16 million against Massie in the race. Massie&#8217;s supportive super PACs spent about $10 million in the race.
A lot of money poured in.
But to understand the race, you should understand what people in Kentucky&#8217;s fourth district were watching. They were not all online. They were not watching the same race that many of us were in the online world and podcast world.
The ads that were running in Kentucky&#8217;s fourth district told you what this race was about. Massie&#8217;s strategy in his TV ads was to hump President Trump&#8217;s leg. His strategy was: what if I oppose President Trump on all of his major policy proposals and throw a bunch of conspiratorial nonsense crap at President Trump about Jeffrey Epstein, but when it comes time for reelection, I hump his leg like a dog in heat?
Massie opposed Trump on a lot of issues where Massie acted as a fiscal conservative, which is not wrong. In fact, if you go back and look at things I&#8217;ve said about Thomas Massie in the past, he&#8217;s been staunchly small government in ways that I largely support.
But that is not what happened here. What actually happened is he decided that he was going to be a gadfly Republican congressman who was totally useless to Trump, and then attack Trump directly. He refused to support all of Trump&#8217;s major legislative initiatives, including the One Big Beautiful Bill; he was one of only two House Republicans to vote against it.
He decided that he was going to join with Democrats to try to stop President Trump&#8217;s airstrikes on Iran. On the SAVE Act, he voted no on a procedural rule that would have enabled the bill to come to the floor.
And then, of course, his biggest move was that he was going to push Trump on the Epstein files. He was going to suggest there was some deep, dark conspiracy about Epstein. It was really the Epstein stuff that set Trump off, because there are a lot of congress members who have voted against Trump occasionally, and he&#8217;s okay with that.
But Massie decided he was going to join with Democrats in pushing a bunch of online conspiratorial nonsense, including the idea that President Trump was actively covering up some sort of sex trafficking ring involving important people who are Trump&#8217;s friends or Trump himself. He joined with Ro Khanna, another conspiratorial Democrat, to do this.
So Massie decided to go to war with Trump, while every ad that he ran in his district was Massie trying to grab Trump and bear-hug him.
Meanwhile, Trump was deploying his entire administration to say, I want nothing to do with this schmuck.
President Trump actually broke his own Twitter ban to step in and basically stomp on Massie the day before the election. He posted:
<blockquote>Horrible Congressman Thomas Massie put out an old Endorsement from many years ago, of him by me long before I knew he was the Worst Congressman in the history of our country. I endorsed Ed Gallrein, a true American patriot, which Massie knows full well, so the statement he put out is fraudulent, just like He is fraudulent. WITHDRAW YOUR FAKE STATEMENT, MASSIE, RIGHT NOW.</blockquote>
If you were a normie in Kentucky&#8217;s 4th Congressional district, what you saw was a congressman whom President Trump did not like because that congressman voted against all of his priorities and was joining with Democrats to do that, as well as personally going after Trump and basically accusing him of covering up a child sex trafficking ring.
That same congressman was trying to hump Trump&#8217;s leg in ads.
It is very clear what this race was about.
Thomas Massie decided to go up against Trump.
And Trump destroyed him.
That is all.

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One GOP Star Just Learned A Very Painful Lesson