For the second time in a week, Donald Trump has shown that whatever difficulties he faces in opinion polls, and whatever economic hardships his war against Iran has sparked for American voters, his grip and influence over the Republican Party and his Maga movement remains ironclad.
On Tuesday night, Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie learned the hard way that it is career suicide to cross the US President.
In a stunning result, Massie, who has been in office since 2012, was defeated in the state’s Republican primary by a Trump-backed challenger, former Navy special operations force member Ed Gallrein.
Predictions that the race would be tight, possibly even too-close-to-call on election night, were unfounded. Massie’s defeat – effectively his de-selection by Kentucky Republicans – was confirmed before even half the votes had been counted.
With a 10-point margin, Gallrein’s romp to victory delivered a massive win for the White House, days after Trump had labelled Massie “the worst and most unreliable Republican Congressman in the history of our Country”.
Massie’s principal sin was to demand full White House accountability for the Trump administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Massie claims that a cover-up is underway in the Department of Justice, aimed at hiding the full extent of the President’s relationship with the disgraced and deceased sex-trafficking financier.
He has also opposed Trump’s war in Iran, condemning the conflict as unconstitutional, a waste of precious federal funds and directly counter to the President’s “America First” agenda.
Thomas Massie addresses a crowd after losing the Republican Party’s nomination during an election night watch party at the Marriott Cincinnati Airport in Hebron, Kentucky (Photo: Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo)On the very first day of the Iran war, Massie rebuked Trump for “acts of war unauthorised by Congress”. But by then, his calls for Trump’s pliant justice department to release all documents relating to Epstein had already put the Republican Congressman on the President’s hit list.
Even so, it is rare for a leader to go after sitting members of their own party, who they need to pass budgets, laws and defend them from attacks from the opposition. Trump doesn’t seem to care about that. If you’re not on his side 100 per cent, he has no time for you.
As much as Republican lawmakers fear that the President’s growing unpopularity – linked to the spiraling cost of living crisis – is dimming their prospects in November’s crucial midterm elections, they are forced to recognise that Trump remains the dominant figure in the party, with a recent track record to prove that Maga voters respond to his commands.
Also rejected by Republican voters on Tuesday was Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, who was the official who defied Trump’s efforts in an infamous phone call to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state.
Raffensperger came third in the Republican primary to be the next governor of Georgia, finishing behind two solidly pro-Trump candidates.
The Kentucky and Georgia results came just 96 hours after Trump also took down a sitting Republican Senator. Bill Cassidy was defeated in the party’s Louisiana primary over the weekend. He, too, had earned Trump’s fury after supporting the President’s impeachment for “incitement to insurrection” in February 2021.
On Saturday, Cassidy became the first sitting Senator from either party to lose in a primary since 2012.
Senator Bill Cassidy hugs a supporter after conceding his primary election race (Photo: Michael DeMocker/Getty Images)Trump has also stunned Republicans by attempting to derail the career of another long-term senator. John Cornyn of Texas, in office since 2002, is locked in a primary contest that pits him against the Lone Star State’s scandal-tarnished former attorney general, Ken Paxton.
“John was very late in backing me,” Trump said on Tuesday. “He was not supportive of me when times were tough,” the President wrote, announcing his endorsement of Paxton, a candidate many Republicans believe will be handily defeated by an up-and-coming Democrat, James Talarico, in November.
For Trump, purging the Republican Party of anyone who has dared to stand up to him seems to be more important than defending a seat that could easily end up deciding the balance of power in Washington.
Besieged by polls that show he is leading the party to possible election defeat in a mere five months, the President is doubling down and using his Maga faithful to cement his own dominance.
Even so, for a moment on Tuesday, Senate Republicans engaged in a highly unusual demonstration of spine. In a 50-47 vote, they backed efforts to force Trump to seek Congressional authorisation for his war on Iran, with Cassidy siding with Democrats and Cornyn failing to show up for the vote. Hours later, Trump was too busy celebrating Massie’s defeat to even comment on the maneuver, much less to show any signs of being troubled by it.
Trump’s sharp-elbowed efforts to defy political gravity were further underscored by his claim on Tuesday that the war with Iran is popular with voters. A New York Times/Sienna College poll this week found that 64 per cent of those surveyed disapprove of the President’s decision to start the war.
“Everyone tells me it’s unpopular, but I think it’s very popular,” Trump told reporters, while claiming that voters who understood that Iranian nuclear weapons could “to take out Los Angeles” would soon come around to backing him.
The President then showed he has no plans to try to turn around any dissenting opinions. “I don’t really have enough time to explain it to people. I’m too busy getting it done,” he said.
Trump’s allies and rivals alike will have taken note. For the US President, it is all or nothing.
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