Trump's grip slips as another Republican ally rebels

President Donald Trump is losing influence in the Republican Party, at least if the dynamics in a key congressional race reflect the party’s larger future.

After describing how the son of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), William Paul, made anti-Semitic comments to Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) during a recent drunk rant, The New Yorker’s Jon Allsop observed that Paul is endorsing Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) in his ongoing primary battle against Trump’s preferred candidate, Ed Gallrein.

“ The episode was one of a number of ugly—and increasingly ridiculous—story lines to have coalesced around Massie’s primary race, which takes place on Tuesday,” Allsop wrote on Monday. “During his antisemitic rant, Paul also attacked Paul Singer, a Jewish Republican donor who has helped fund the campaign to unseat Massie; a pro-Massie PAC ran an ad depicting Singer as part of an ‘LGBTQ MAFIA,’ beneath a rainbow-tinted Star of David. (‘SAY ‘NO’ TO THE FREAKS,’ the ad continued.) Elsewhere, Cynthia West, a woman who dated Massie for a few months after his wife died, in 2024, alleged that Massie had offered her five thousand dollars in ‘cow money’—that is, supposedly untraceable cash that Massie, who owns a farm, raised from selling cattle—to drop a wrongful-termination complaint against Victoria Spartz, an Indiana congresswoman in whose office Massie had helped West land a job. Massie denied this and dismissed the story as part of a ‘dirty trick’” campaign against him.”

Allsop added, “Outside groups, meanwhile, traded A.I. slop, including one ad in which an avatar loosely resembling Massie is shown in a “THROUPLE!” with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar. The small print clarified that this was satire, but at least one voter apparently thought that it was real.”

From there, The New Yorker journalist warned against reading into Massie’s potential victory or defeat, at least when it comes to Trump’s influence over the party. Allsop pointed out that Massie has withstood Trump’s challenges before and could prevail because of regional political variables that do not broadly extend to the rest of America. At the same time, Allsop noted that the issues being raised by Massie and his supporters during the race — particularly playing into prejudice against groups like Jews and the LGBTQ+ community — may persist in Republican politics, and in more vicious form, as a result of dynamics like those seen in the Massie-Gallrein race.

“In the event of a Massie defeat, local disputes—from recriminations over funding for a bridge to Massie’s responsiveness to his constituents—will have played at least some role,” Allsop wrote. “Even a Massie win, as one strategist told Salon, wouldn’t necessarily justify clean conclusions about the President given the idiosyncrasies of Massie’s district, which stretches from the Cincinnati suburbs to the West Virginia border.”

From there, Allsop analyzed the broader implications of the contest regardless of who prevails.

“The truly unsettled question, now, is what will happen once these elections are done, and Trump (it must be hoped) enters his lame-duck era?” Allsop asked. “Will the glue of Trumpism cure around another leader, as it has around him? Or will MAGA become unstuck? Massie has said that, if he loses, he will go back to his farm—Cincinnatus, returning to Cincinnati. (Well, close enough.) But the faction that he represents—those who believe, essentially, that Trump has sold MAGA out, at least in part, and not least to the interests of Israel—will have its word to say about the future of the Party, through Massie’s mouth or someone else’s. (We will, perhaps, all be watching more Tucker Carlson in the years ahead.)”

Allsop concluded, “Already, Massie’s race may have thrown up a more telling indicator than its eventual result: William Paul’s unhinged tirade at Mike Lawler. That was about Massie, but, really, it wasn’t about him at all. “

While Massie’s race is revolving to an extent around Israel, Trump has targeted Massie because of his repeated criticisms of the administration on issues like the Iran war and his ties to the late Jeffrey Epstein. As Reason’s libertarian commentator Katherine Magnu-Ward wrote earlier this month, the loss of Massie could damage the Republican Party’s anti-Trump elements.

Massie’s “independent streak is what makes him so irritating to his party, and so useful to it,” Magnu-Ward wrote. “A movement that cannot tolerate a Thomas Massie has become exactly what its critics say it is — a personality cult with principles grafted on after the fact.”

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