Congressman Thomas Massie, one of the most vocal Republican critics of Donald Trump, has lost his fight for re-election to a challenger endorsed by the president.
Ed Gallrein, a former Navy Seal, will now compete in November’s midterm election after his victory in the Kentucky primary on Tuesday.
The contest, the most expensive primary in the history of the House of Representatives, had been widely seen as a key test of President Trump’s decade-long grip on the Republican Party.
Trump repeatedly called for voters to back Gallrein over the incumbent Massie, who he has described as a “major sleazebag” and “the worst Republican congressman in history”.
Massie, who has been in office since 2012, broke with Trump by voting against his “big, beautiful” tax and spending legislation last year over concerns about the national debt. He has also voted to curtail Trump’s attacks on suspected drug boats in the Caribbean and his ongoing war in Iran.
Massie also joined with Democrats – and a handful of Republicans – to force Trump’s Department of Justice to release all of its files on Jeffrey Epstein.
In his concession speech, Massie told supporters that he was proud of his campaign team, telling them “we’ve been honourable the whole time”.
“It started nine months ago, and they didn’t even have a candidate, and they decided they wanted to take me out,” he said.
On Monday, Trump criticised Massie in a series of social media posts, calling him “an obstructionist and a fool”.
Getty ImagesUS Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth campaigned for Gallrein in Kentucky, where he accused Massie of “constant obstruction”. In response, Massie said that he saw Hegseth’s presence in his district as a good sign.
“You don’t send the Secretary of War to Kentucky during a war if you think your candidate is up 10 points. That’s what you do when you realise your whole campaign is imploding,” he told CBS News.
Massie also touted his record of voting with Trump “90% of the time,” but added that the president and his allies “want 100% compliance”.
“It’s only the 10% of the time they’re mad about – when I won’t vote for a war, when I won’t vote for warrantless spying and when I won’t vote to bankrupt the country,” he said.
“But in those instances, I’m doing what I told the people in Kentucky I would do.”
In a separate development in Kentucky, Congressman Andy Barr won the Republican nomination to replace retiring Senator Mitch McConnell who has been in the Senate for more than 40 years.
Trump had endorsed Barr, and his victory did not come as a surprise after Trump intervened to offer an ambassadorship to his main Republican challenger.
Trump has been aggressively wielding his influence with recent Republican endorsements, including by helping to tank the campaign of an incumbent senator who had voted to convict him during his 2021 impeachment trial.
In Texas, he has also given his endorsement to Ken Paxton rather than longtime Republican Senator John Cornyn.
“John Cornyn is a good man, and I worked well with him, but he was not supportive of me when times were tough,” Trump said of his decision to back Paxton on Tuesday.
