SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Yet another Republican opposed by President Trump has lost a primary race. Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie has lost to Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein. That is according to a race call by The Associated Press. Massie had been a rare high-profile Republican critic of Trump in Congress. This is the latest in a string of big wins for Trump in his push to punish Republicans who don't fall in line. Kentucky Public Radio's Sylvia Goodman has been following the race in northern Kentucky and joins me now. Good evening.
SYLVIA GOODMAN, BYLINE: Good evening.
DETROW: So as you are looking at the results coming in so far, what stands out to you?
GOODMAN: So far, it's looked like most counties in the northern Kentucky district are going for Gallrein. It's looking like margins of roughly 9 percentage points for him, and many of the counties that we thought of as kind of a hotbed of the liberty, libertarian arm of the party, as it's known in Kentucky, still voted for Gallrein. Here he is in his victory speech just after the AP called the race.
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ED GALLREIN: Now my focus is on advancing the president's and the party's agenda to put America first and Kentucky always.
GOODMAN: President Trump and his allies went hard against Massie. I mean, we saw Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth here in Kentucky stumping for Gallrein on Monday.
DETROW: Yeah. It's pretty unusual for a defense secretary to get political like that. But let's just back up. How did Congressman Massie end up drawing the ire of President Trump and allies like Hegseth?
GOODMAN: Massie makes no bones about voting against his party. At times, he wears his signature debt clock on his lapel - basically everywhere he wears that thing, and he votes that way. He was one of two House GOP no votes on the One Big Beautiful Bill because of the trillions it's projected to add to the debt. He's pushed back against the president's military operations in both Venezuela and Iran. And perhaps most notably, he was the lead Republican forcing Trump's hand in releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files. And all of that together has made the president pretty unhappy with Massie, and this result is following a lot of the trends we've seen nationally when the president has decided to get involved in his own party's primaries. Massie, for his part, says he votes with the party 90% of the time. It's the other 10% he's just not willing to compromise on, and that has led to this result, I guess.
DETROW: I mentioned this at the top of the segment, but in the past few weeks, we have seen Trump actively working to take down Republicans and winning. That was the case this past weekend in Louisiana with Senator Bill Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump in 2021 in Trump's second impeachment trial. He lost his primary. Now Massie loses tonight.
GOODMAN: In his concession speech tonight, Massie said that from his perspective, it appears voters want a politician who will, quote, "go along to get along." But Massie says he thinks younger voters feel differently.
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THOMAS MASSIE: We stirred up something. There is a yearning in this country for somebody who will vote for principles over party.
DETROW: In the meantime, Gallrein is going to be his party's nominee for Congress. Tell us more about him.
GOODMAN: So when Trump came to Kentucky in March to campaign for Gallrein, he literally said he was just looking for a, quote, "warm body" to take on Massie, but said that Gallrein was straight out of central casting. I mean, he's a retired Navy SEAL officer. He grew up in a farming family. And Gallrein, for his part, basically says he supports Trump unequivocally. He's attacked Massie for not voting on Trump's priority legislation in favor of it, and he's accused him of voting from the left rather than for his own party. And it appears that tonight, that argument resonated with voters.
DETROW: That is Kentucky Public Radio's Sylvia Goodman in Louisville, Kentucky. Thanks so much.
GOODMAN: Glad to be here. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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