There aren’t many lawmakers like Thomas Massie left in Congress.
The renegade Republican who rose to prominence as an idiosyncratic yet consistent outlier in his party, popular in the Kentucky district that repeatedly sent him to the House, lost his primary bid for reelection Tuesday after a vicious and costly attack by President Donald Trump.
The stunning outcome caps a career like few others and shows the extent of the president’s ability to badger, badmouth and eventually boot out his political adversaries — and that no lawmaker is apparently safe. Massie’s defeat comes after the Trump-led ouster of Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana over the weekend and the president’s endorsement Tuesday of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in his challenge to Sen. John Cornyn, which sent chills and anger through the Senate.
Trump had reserved his fiercest attacks for Massie, a quirky conservative who had become among the most powerful rank-and-file Republicans in the House because of his willingness to vote as he pleased, rather than as the party demanded. And now he’s been toppled like so many other Republicans who crossed the president.
Massie was undaunted after losing to Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL handpicked by Trump.