President Trump’s midterm retribution tour against Republicans he deems disloyal to him reached its apogee on Tuesday in Kentucky, where Representative Thomas Massie, his most prominent G.O.P. antagonist in Congress, lost to the president’s handpicked candidate, Ed Gallrein, according to The Associated Press.
Mr. Gallrein, a relatively unknown dairy farmer and retired Navy SEAL who had waged only a single unsuccessful political campaign before challenging Mr. Massie, defeated the seven-term incumbent, 55 percent to 45 percent.
Mr. Gallrein’s primary victory made him the overwhelming favorite to win the general election. The gerrymandered Kentucky district, which stretches from the suburbs of Louisville to counties along the Ohio River as well as a rural area near the West Virginia border, is heavily Republican. Nearly two-thirds of its voters cast their ballots for Mr. Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
In brief remarks on Tuesday night, Mr. Gallrein thanked Mr. Trump “for his leadership at this critical time,” and said he was grateful to his family for their support.
“Campaigning is sometimes a contact sport,” Mr. Gallrein said. He repeated a phrase he has said Trump likes: “America first, Kentucky always.”
Mr. Massie’s high-profile defections from Mr. Trump and the president’s determination to punish him for them has made the primary in Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District one of the most closely watched, expensive and contentious races of the 2026 midterms.
It had widely been portrayed as a referendum on Mr. Trump’s influence over his party, and Mr. Massie had characterized it as a test of whether there was still room for an independent-minded Republican in the Trump era.
His defeat was the latest success in a series of proxy battles the president has waged within his own party in states across the country by running candidates he prefers in states like Indiana and Louisiana against Republican incumbents whom he considers disloyal.
But Mr. Trump saw Mr. Massie as being in a category of his own.
Mr. Massie voted against Mr. Trump’s tax cut bill, denounced the war in Iran and insisted on the release of the Epstein files over the president’s angry objections. Such apostasies, as the president put it in a video released the day before the primary, qualified Mr. Massie for the distinction of “the worst congressman in the history of our country.”
On Tuesday night, in a long and defiant speech before a raucous crowd of several hundred supporters in an airport hotel ballroom, Mr. Massie lamented that voters apparently wanted “a go-along-to-get-along member of Congress,” but addressed a younger generation of voters he said had formed “a movement” to support him.
“You don’t like bullies and you also don’t tolerate it,” he said.
And Mr. Massie signaled that he would spend his remaining months in office — “I got seven months left,” he noted — challenging Mr. Trump. He likened the president’s plan to build a new ballroom at the White House to something out of “the Roman empire.”
“They’re trying to bring back the war — screw that,” Mr. Massie said, joining his supporters in a chant of “No more wars.”
The contest became one of the most expensive congressional primary races in history, awash with millions of dollars raised by the candidates and affiliated groups. In particular, Mr. Gallrein’s campaign benefited from the support of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and the Republican Jewish Coalition, as well as three pro-Israel billionaires who do not reside in the district: Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer and John Paulson.
Mr. Massie referred derisively to that support on Tuesday night, quipping that he would have come out to address supporters sooner, “but I had to call my opponent and concede, and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.”
Despite being little known even in his own district, Mr. Gallrein ran the understated, risk-averse campaign of a front-runner. Few of his events were well-attended; fewer still were open to the media. Mr. Gallrein was largely content to emphasize his agrarian upbringing, his combat experience and most of all his fidelity to Mr. Trump.
In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Gallrein hesitated to name what House committees he would like to be assigned to, instead saying he would defer to the wishes of the president, Speaker Mike Johnson and Vice President JD Vance: “I’m gonna say, ‘Where do you need me, coach?’”
That the candidate’s potential as a legislator might be beside the point was implied by the president in his video statement. Mr. Gallrein, he said, was “a patriot” and “fantastic.” Then Mr. Trump added, “But forget that,” and went on to describe Mr. Massie in historically disastrous terms.
While he spoke to supporters for less than five minutes on Tuesday night, Mr. Gallrein made time for an interview with Sean Hannity, the Fox News host.
“It’s a new day,” Mr. Gallrein told Mr. Hannity. “People deserve better, and I’m going to give it to them.”
Ginny Whitehouse contributed reporting from Covington, Ky.
Robert Draper is based in Washington and writes about domestic politics. He is the author of several books and has been a journalist for three decades.
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