US: Anti-Aipac congressman unseated in most expensive House primary ever

“US: Anti-Aipac congressman unseated in most expensive House primary ever Submitted by Yasmine El-Sabawi on Tue, 05/19/2026 - 21:26 Thomas Massie lost to the Trump-endorsed former Navy Seal, Ed Gallrein Kentucky Republican Congressman Thomas Massie is pictured at the US Capitol in Washington, DC on 29 April 2026 (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters) Off Thomas Massie, the Republican congressman who voted down foreign aid packages and heavily criticised pro-Israel lobbying groups' influence in US politics, lost his primary race in Kentucky on Tuesday. It was the most expensive US primary race of all time as outside groups - namely pro-Israel political action committees - poured millions of dollars into anti-Massie ad campaigns to oust him from Washington. "Congratulations to US Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein for defeating anti-Israel incumbent Thomas Massie!" the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) posted to X on Tuesday. "Pro-Israel Americans are proud to back candidates who support a strong [US-Israel] alliance and help defeat those who work to undermine it. Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics!" 68-year-old Gallrein, who has never held elected office before, will now be the Republican candidate for the House of Representatives in Kentucky's 4th District, come November's midterm elections. He had previously pledged his loyalty to President Donald Trump. In return, Trump gave Gallrein his endorsement. Massie, the president said on Monday, is "the worst congressman in the long and storied history of the Republican party". Massie himself has voted to back Trump's agenda more than 90 percent of the time, and they both agree on issues important to the conservative movement, such as ousting immigrants and prohibiting abortion. But Massie's insistence that the entirety of the secret files on Jeffrey Epstein be released. potentially compromising Trump himself, was likely the last straw for the president. Massie had already spent the past year making his critical views on Israel known, and refusing to take money from groups whose sole agenda is the Israeli state. Antisemitism accusation The Associated Press called the race for Gallrein less than an hour after the polls closed on Tuesday evening. Former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, who resigned in March after saying he could not support Israel taking the US into a war on Iran, praised Massie on X after the results were announced. US congressman says pro-Israel groups behind 95 percent of funding against him Read More » "God bless Thomas Massie. He walks out of this with his honor intact. He’s a patriot & kept his integrity. As long as the voters give their votes to whoever can run the most ads we will have politicians who are purchased by foreign governments & corporate interests," Kent said. On Monday, in an interview with CBS, Massie said pro-Israel groups have "tried to buy my vote for 14 years, and it was never for sale". "No country is special, and no country deserves my constituents' taxpayer dollars," he added. "So I have never voted for foreign aid to Egypt, to Syria, to Israel, or to Ukraine - but the ones in Israel, since they're the biggest recipients of it, that makes them a little bit mad." CBS reporter Ed O'Keefe then asked Massie - twice - if he's an antisemite. "Oh hell no," Massie responded. Anti-Zionism, he said, is not antisemitism. "It does Jewish Americans a big disfavour to equate the two." Pro-Israel lobbying groups have succeeded in ousting members of Congress from office before, including Cory Bush of Missouri and Jamaal Bowman of New York. Late last year, the advocacy group Democracy for the Arab World Now, founded by the late Middle East Eye and Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, published what it says are the names and faces of the individuals who run the biggest pro-Israel group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, in its " Faces of Aipac " project. 'The one whistleblower will be gone' Massie told The Tucker Carlson Show earlier this month that "at least" 95 percent of the funding backing his main opponent comes from pro-Israel lobbying groups. He is one of the rare Republicans to commit to bipartisan projects, in this case with progressive Democrat Ro Khanna of California. The two men advocated for the release of the Epstein Files as well as reining in the president's war powers. US: Progressive coalition teams up to take on pro-Israel lobby group Aipac Read More » But Aipac, among other pro-Israel groups, has led the charge to try to ensure Massie loses his race, he told Carlson. "[The money] didn't come from regular people. It's come from billionaires, and 95 percent of it - at least 95 percent - has come from the Israeli lobby," Massie said. He specifically named Aipac; the Republican Jewish Coalition; Christians United for Israel; and a trio of billionaires that have dominated the US election landscape: Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer, and John Paulson - none of whom are from Kentucky. "Their position is more war, it's more strife, it's more bombs, it's more foreign aid, and those are the things that I've been voting against. So the real reason that this race is a serious race, and I may lose, is because a foreign lobby has fully funded to the extent that they've never done in any Republican race ever before," Massie said. Massie has raised some $5m for his campaign, but $10m alone has been spent running attack ads against him in Kentucky, including an AI-generated video of him going into a hotel with members of "The Squad" - the progressive female congresswomen in the Democratic Party. "Why would they care what happens in a Republican primary in Kentucky?" Carlson asked of the pro-Israel groups and billionaires. "If I lose on May 19, I'll be out of Congress on January 3 next year, and nobody's gonna follow my Twitter, nobody's gonna go to my Facebook page to see what's going on. I won't be invited down into the secret SCIFs to read the secret interpretations of the laws that the executive branch is using to spy on you. The one whistleblower, if you will, in Congress, will be gone," Massie responded. A SCIF is a sensitive compartmented information facility, also known as a secure room, where classified information is shared with lawmakers. US Politics Washington News Post Date Override 0 Update Date Mon, 05/04/2020 - 21:19 Update Date Override 0

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