“I would’ve come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede. And it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.”

That was Thomas Massie’s concession Tuesday night. The Republican congressman from Kentucky lost his primary in the most expensive House race in U.S. history, and his closing thought was that his Trump-endorsed opponent had been bought by a foreign country.

His voters did not buy that. They bought a new congressman.

The District Voted for Trump by Thirty-Five Points

Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District is the suburbs of Cincinnati and the eastern suburbs of Louisville. Trump won the district with 67 percent of the vote in 2024, carrying every one of its 21 counties with at least 59 percent. It is the fiftieth most Republican district in the country.

Massie spent the last term voting against the people who sent him there. He voted against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, against U.S. action in Iran, and against the Maduro capture operation. Trump and his Justice Department released the Epstein files and worked the case. Massie ran a separate discharge petition to keep the story in the news as a cudgel against the president. He pursued the fight to damage Trump, not to help Epstein’s victims. On April 16, he was the lone Republican to vote for a war powers resolution to rein in the administration.

Ed Gallrein is a former Navy SEAL and a fifth-generation Kentucky farmer. Trump endorsed him personally. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth flew to Kentucky on Monday to campaign with him. Trump posted on Truth Social for the first time in two months to call Massie “the Worst Congressman in the History of our Country” and to demand he withdraw a misleading old endorsement text.

The voters of Kentucky’s 4th picked the Trump-endorsed challenger. That is what happened with Marjorie Taylor Greene in November. It just happened again.

Trump Is Massively Popular With the People Who Vote in Republican Primaries

Trump’s overall approval has slipped. Nate Silver’s Silver Bulletin polling average puts his net approval near minus twenty, a second-term low. The RealClearPolitics average is similar. Among Republicans and the voters who turn out for Republican primaries, his standing is overwhelmingly positive. In a Trump-plus-thirty-five district, Trump is the most popular figure on the ballot whether his name is on it or not.

That is the part Massie misread.

Massie is not the first. Last Friday, Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump in the second impeachment trial, failed to make the runoff in his GOP Senate primary. Trump-endorsed Rep. Julia Letlow led the field with 45 percent. Two weeks ago in Indiana, Trump-backed challengers defeated five Republican state senators who voted against his congressional redistricting plan. Tuesday, Massie. Over the weekend, Trump named Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert as the next target, calling her “weak minded” for defending Massie.

White House Communications Director Steven Cheung put it plainly after the loss: “Do not ever doubt President Trump and his political power.”

That is what it looks like to cross a Republican president who carried your district by thirty-five points. The voters of KY-4 saw their congressman vote against Trump’s signature bill. They acted accordingly.

Massie Does Not Blame His Voters. He Blames the Jews.

The math is not what Massie blamed after losing.

In the week before the primary, Massie called the race “a referendum on whether Israel gets to buy seats in Congress.” In a 2024 interview with Tucker Carlson, Massie said every Republican in Congress except him has an “AIPAC babysitter.” AIPAC is the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the largest pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington.

This is not new. In December 2023, Massie posted a meme implying Congress was loyal to “Zionism” instead of “American patriotism.” People at the time called it antisemitism. In 2022, Massie voted alone against a resolution condemning antisemitism. He claimed it limited free speech.

In the final days before Tuesday’s vote, he posed at a campaign event with a man wearing an “American Reich” sweatshirt. The Anti-Defamation League has flagged the group for Nazi-resonant imagery.

A congressman who has spent years calling Jewish institutions the secret string-pullers of American politics lost his primary and pointed at Israel. He should have asked whether or not his voters approved of his constant attacks on Trump and on anyone who supported him, which included most of his district.

The Libertarian Defense Does Not Work

The libertarian-right corners of conservative media argued Massie is a principled libertarian who opposes foreign aid as a category. Massie told CBS this week: “I have never voted for foreign aid to Egypt, to Syria, to Israel or to Ukraine.”

The defense fails on the record. Massie has nothing to show his district. He has no signature bill. He has no legislative win. He has no policy delivered. He has a series of dumb moves: voting against the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, calling AIPAC a babysitter on Tucker Carlson’s show, posting memes the Republican Jewish Coalition and the Senate Majority Leader both called antisemitism, posing with men in “American Reich” sweatshirts on the eve of an election. The libertarian principle on foreign aid would carry weight if the rest of the record carried anything at all.

The voters of KY-4 looked at fourteen years of dumb moves and zero results. They picked someone else.

The Money Was American

The Intercept ran this headline last night: “Thomas Massie Loses His Seat in a Win for Trump — and AIPAC.” The framing on the left and on the Massie right is identical: a foreign lobby bought a U.S. House seat.

The Federal Election Commission filings tell a different story.

Total spending on the race came to $32 million. AIPAC’s super PAC spent about $2.6 million through its political arm, the United Democracy Project. The Republican Jewish Coalition Victory Fund spent about $5 million. The largest piece came from MAGA KY, the Trump-supported super PAC built specifically to defeat Massie. Its biggest donor was Paul Singer, an American citizen who lives in New York.

Singer gave to an American super PAC built around an American president’s endorsement to defeat an American congressman in an American primary. The biggest single check against Massie was written in New York, not Tel Aviv.

“Israel bought my seat” is a story Massie wrote and the left’s media echoed. The seat moved from one American to another.

The Marjorie Taylor Greene Pattern

In 2018, Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote on Facebook that the California wildfires might have been started by a space-based solar generator. She named the Rothschild family, a longstanding antisemitic trope, as one of the entities possibly behind it. Greene later admitted she had named the Rothschilds. The internet christened the post “Jewish space lasers.” Greene was stripped of her House committee assignments in February 2021.

Greene resigned from Congress in November 2025 after Trump called her “wacky” and a “traitor.” She left office on January 5.

The pattern repeats itself. When the politics fails, the explanation turns Jewish-coded. Wildfires must be Jewish space lasers, not utility negligence. A primary loss must be Israel buying the seat, not the Trump-plus-thirty-five voters of Kentucky’s 4th picking a Trump-endorsed challenger.

Two Republican members of Congress have lost their jobs over this reflex in less than seven months.

The Other Party Just Made the Opposite Choice

On April 30, 2026, Maine Governor Janet Mills suspended her Senate campaign. Within hours, Schumer called the man who beat her in the polling, Graham Platner. Platner is a Bowdoinham oyster farmer and Marine combat veteran. Schumer congratulated him on a well-run race. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand pivoted with Schumer. The Democratic Senate establishment ran to embrace him.

The man they ran to embrace has a Totenkopf SS tattoo on his chest, the death’s-head insignia worn by the Nazi unit that guarded concentration camps. He posted on Reddit in praise of Hamas’s October 2014 raid that killed Israeli soldiers, calling it “a damn fine looking and successful raid.” He has been endorsed by Sens. Sanders and Warren. Sen. Chris Van Hollen went on television to defend him under a “PTSD and second chances” framing.

The Maine Democratic Senate primary is June 9. Mills is out. Platner is the presumptive Democratic nominee. He is running against Republican Sen. Susan Collins in November.

The Republican Party just fired two of its worst antisemites in seven months. The Democratic Senate leadership ran to embrace one. Same antisemitism question. Two different American verdicts.

Massie Is a Lunatic. The Republican Party Just Got Healthier.

Thomas Massie lost a Trump-plus-thirty-five primary to a Trump-endorsed Navy SEAL after crossing Trump on his signature bill, the Iran war, and the Maduro operation. He spent fourteen years in Congress and delivered nothing his district could point to. The voters of northern Kentucky acted accordingly.

He had two honest ways to concede. He picked the stupid one. He blamed the Jews instead of being honest about himself.

Massie blames the Jews because Massie is a lunatic. He is not a careful watcher of trends. He got wiped out in a Republican primary by a Trump-endorsed challenger in the fiftieth most Republican district in America, and he looked at that result and saw Tel Aviv. That is how he thinks.

The Republican Party rejected him Tuesday night. Greene in November. Massie in May. The Democratic Senate leadership endorsed a version of the same reflex three weeks earlier in Maine and is running it against Susan Collins.

The Jews had nothing to do with the Kentucky vote. The voters of Kentucky’s 4th District did. The voters of Maine will make their own call on June 9. The Republican Party is healthier without Thomas Massie. The voters of his district just made it so.