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thomas massie
Thomas Massie's Defeat to Trump-Backed Ed Gallrein Speaks Directly to America's Moral Decline
A healthy society rewards honesty, independence, transparency, and institutional courage. A diseased culture—even if we look beyond particular ideologies or partisan alignment—values something altogether different.
May 20, 2026
On Tuesday, May 19, incumbent Congressman Thomas Massie—the congressman who helped lead the charge to force the release of the Epstein Files to the American public—was defeated in the Republican primary by former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein. The race became the highest-spending House primary in American history, and many immediately interpreted the result as yet another demonstration of Donald Trump’s overwhelming political power.
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung celebrated the result bluntly: “Do not ever doubt President Trump and his political power. Fuck around, find out.”
But I think the deeper story is more complex than this, and I feel uniquely positioned to comment on this election, not only as a constituent of Northern Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District and someone who has interacted personally with Thomas Massie, but also as someone involved in ongoing anti-corruption and civic reconstruction efforts in the region.
In April 2016, when I was a college student, I attended a luncheon hosted, if I recall correctly, by the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. At the time, I was studying conflict and security in my political science program while interning on research related to the Syrian conflict. I had noticed something that was not yet being widely discussed publicly: Pentagon-backed militias and CIA-backed militias in Syria were reportedly engaging in firefights with one another—different arms of the same American security apparatus, literally shooting at each other through proxies.
I brought this up with Massie privately afterward. To my surprise, he confirmed the reality of the situation to me directly, when much of the press still barely acknowledged it. As we walked toward his car, we both shook our heads at the absurdity of it all: an empire increasingly at war with itself while the public drifted deeper into spectacle and apathy. That moment stayed with me because it was one of the few times I saw a federal politician speak candidly and honestly without rehearsed talking points.
Ten years later, Massie is now effectively gone from Congress. How does someone widely regarded as unusually principled, intellectually independent, and personally honest lose in such dramatic fashion? Especially after helping push one of the largest public accountability stories in recent American politics with the Epstein affair?
To understand how someone like Massie could lose in this environment, I think we first need to step back and examine the broader social psychology at work—not only in Northern Kentucky, but increasingly in the United States itself. Erich Fromm, drawing on psychoanalytic concepts originally developed by Freud and later expanded within social psychology, argued in The Sane Society that individuals under prolonged conditions of fear, alienation, instability, and social fragmentation can psychologically regress into more primitive modes of thought and behavior.
Mature forms of reasoning and moral responsibility begin to weaken, and people increasingly retreat into dependency, tribalism, spectacle, aggression, and irrationality as defense mechanisms. Fromm’s contribution was extending these dynamics beyond the individual and into the social sphere, arguing that entire societies can regress under conditions of deep political, economic, and spiritual dislocation, producing cultures driven less by reasoned civic life than by fear, conformity, resentment, and authoritarian impulses.
In many ways, the history of Northern Kentucky reflects precisely this kind of social adaptation to institutional decay. Newport became nationally infamous during the twentieth century as “Sin City,” a vice hub built on organized gambling, prostitution, racketeering, and institutional corruption. Criminal syndicates connected to figures like Meyer Lansky and the Cleveland Four embedded themselves deeply into the region’s political and economic life. Corruption extended into police departments, political offices, business networks, and broader civic culture. Vice became normalized because it generated money, jobs, and local economic growth. Over time, entire communities psychologically adapted themselves to corruption and decay as an ordinary feature of public life.
Despite the reform efforts of the 1960s, many of the underlying patterns never truly disappeared. Look at the headlines from just the last several years:
In 2018, former Campbell County judge Tim Nolan—a major Trump ally in Northern Kentucky who had served as Trump’s campaign chairman in Campbell County—was sentenced to twenty years in prison after pleading guilty to charges connected to a large-scale human trafficking operation involving minors. The case shocked the region nationally because it revealed how deeply institutional prestige, political influence, and criminal pathology could intertwine beneath the surface of respectable civic life.
More recently, another longtime Campbell County official was arrested after allegedly engaging in sexually explicit online conversations with someone he believed to be a fourteen-year-old girl.
The City of Florence, the district’s second-largest city, announced an FBI investigation into possible long-running revenue diversion schemes tied to municipal finances. Erlanger officials openly discussed limiting public records requests and explored mechanisms to refuse requests deemed “political.”
FOX19 previously documented extensive corruption scandals across Northern Kentucky involving embezzlement, abuse of public office, and theft of taxpayer money.
Meanwhile, federal prosecutors revealed that a Russia-linked transnational fraud network used a Northern Kentucky storefront company as part of a massive $10 billion Medicare fraud operation spanning multiple countries—the largest fraud scheme of this kind in U.S. history, under the nose of local authorities and almost entirely ignored by major press (and right-wing influences who claim to be against fraud, for instance, in Minnesota).
There does not really seem to be a coincidence here. Northern Kentucky’s history shows, with remarkable consistency, that weakened civic culture, normalized corruption, collapsing institutional trust, and chronic public nihilism become soft terrain for exploitation—whether by local patronage networks, organized crime, political demagogues, or even transnational criminal enterprises. It is no wonder that voters are tolerant of the rampant corruption today in Washington; they have already done so for generations, at various points
A healthy society rewards honesty, independence, transparency, and institutional courage. A diseased culture—one that is regressing—increasingly rewards tribal loyalty, emotional spectacle, obedience, factional identity, and the destruction of dissenters. In such an environment, integrity itself becomes politically dangerous because it disrupts the emotional equilibrium of the system.
As I see it, this victory says less about Trump’s power and more about America’s moral decline.
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Trump Critic on Epstein and Iran War, Massie Ousted by AIPAC-Backed Gallrein
"He lost," said friend and congressional ally Rep. Ro Khanna, "because he had the guts to stand up to the Epstein class and against the war."
May 20, 2026
Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, an outspoken libertarian and one of the few Republicans in the current Congress who has shown the courage to stand up to US President Donald Trump on issues ranging from the Epstein files to the disastrous war against Iran, was defeated Tuesday by a Trump-backed challenger in what was broadly characterized as political revenge by the president and his MAGA allies.
Massie fell to former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein by 10 points (55%-45%) in Kentucky's 4th District. Gallrein was not only supported by Trump but also had Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth stump for his campaign last week, activities that critics said violated the Hatch Act, which prevents members of the executive branch from participating in electoral politics.
Gallrein was also the favored candidate of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which showered millions of dollars on his campaign through a variety of political action committees (PACs), making the primary race in Kentucky's 4th the most expensive in the nation's history.
In remarks conceding his defeat, Massie took it on the chin, but also threw a swipe at Trump as well as his GOP colleagues, who have proved nearly completely cowed by the president both on the domestic front and when it comes to foreign policy.
"If the legislative branch always votes with the president, we do have a king,” Massie told his supporters Tuesday night, as opposed to the "republic" the nation is designed to have if the Constitution is followed. He also took a jab at Gallrein's backing from AIPAC, saying as he took the microphone that "I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent to concede, and it took a while to find him in Tel Aviv."
Massie: I would have come out sooner but I had to call my opponent to concede and it took a while to find him in Tel Aviv pic.twitter.com/DmTkDfS17a
— Acyn (@Acyn) May 20, 2026
Massie, along with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), was the leader on two key issues over recent months that challenged Trump's authority: the first was forcing the release of the sealed files of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the other was pushing to curtail Trump's war of choice in Iran, which the president launched in February without congressional approval and in violation of international law.
Responding to Massie's defeat, Khanna said Tuesday night, "My good friend Thomas Massie lost tonight. He lost because he had the guts to stand up to the Epstein class and against the war."
My good friend @RepThomasMassie lost tonight.
He lost because he had the guts to stand up to the Epstein class and against the war.
He won voters under 45 by 30 points.
Tonight, I say to this voters who feel rejected by Trump. We welcome you. Join our coalition to take on a… pic.twitter.com/tAGJjtct5b
— Ro Khanna (@RoKhanna) May 20, 2026
Khanna further noted that Massie "risked his career to pass the most popular and consequential bipartisan legislation in modern history," referring to the resolution forcing the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files.
He added that Massie won young voters in his district—those "who believe the system is unfair"—by 45%. "Tonight, I say to these voters who feel rejected by Trump: We welcome you," said Khanna. "Join our coalition to take on a rotten system and stand for the working class over the Epstein class."
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Thomas Massie Wants to End Trump’s Iran War—So Pete Hegseth Wants to End Massie
"President Trump does not need more people in Washington who are trying to make a point," said the Defense Secretary. "Especially from his own party."
May 18, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is being accused of violating long-standing Pentagon policy by going scorched earth on the campaign trail in Kentucky against the leading Republican critic of President Donald Trump's war against Iran, Rep. Thomas Massie.
Massie (R-Ky.), who has denounced the war as unauthorized and unconstitutional and become a leading Trump antagonist on other issues like the Jeffrey Epstein files and his plans to renovate the White House ballroom, has been hit with an avalanche of spending from MAGA-aligned and pro-Israel donors seeking his ouster on Tuesday in a Republican primary that has become the most expensive in the history of the US House of Representatives.
Trump has thrown his full weight behind Massie's challenger, retired Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, who polls show about even with or slightly ahead of Massie.
It may be another case of Trump using his bully pulpit to turn GOP voters against Republicans who dare defy him, with Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) being the most recent casualty. The senator, who voted to convict Trump for his role in inciting the January 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection, was defeated in his primary over the weekend after Trump deemed him a "disloyal disaster" and endorsed a challenger.
On stage at a campaign event for Gallrein on Monday, in what The New York Times described as a "highly unusual" display of partisanship from an active defense secretary, Hegseth fulminated against Massie for showing anything less than absolute fealty to the president.
"President Trump does not need more people in Washington who are trying to make a point, especially from his own party. He needs people willing to help him win, to vote with him when it matters the most," Hegseth said. "And too often, Thomas Massie has acted like his job is to stand apart from the movement that President Trump leads instead of strengthening it."
"When President Trump needs backup, Massie wants to debate process," Hegseth said, referring perhaps to Massie's joining with Democrats to introduce war powers resolutions to require congressional approval of Trump's military actions in Iran and Venezuela.
"When the movement needs unity, especially at the biggest moment, Massie is willing to vote with Democrats," Hegseth continued. "When conservatives are fighting the most radical left in American history, too often Massie's instinct is to throw elbows at fellow Republicans instead of the people who are destroying our country or want to destroy our country, and there's one man standing in their way, and it’s Trump."
The watchdog group Democracy Forward sent a letter to the Defense Department's inspector general on Monday, arguing that Hegseth's speech violated the Pentagon's 2026 political activity rules under the Hatch Act, which says that Senate-confirmed presidential appointees are “expressly prohibit[ed]” from “taking an active part in... political campaigns," including making speeches for specific candidates.
The letter also notes that Hegseth was previously scheduled to "headline" a Top Gun-themed political fundraiser for Rep. Zach Nunn (R-Iowa) in March before it was abruptly canceled due to the Iran War.
“While flagrant violations of ethics laws and policies seem to be commonplace for this administration, Secretary Hegseth appears to have doubled down, violating his own agency’s specific regulations against politicking,” said Skye Perryman, the president and CEO of Democracy Forward. “Our national security and those charged to protect it must be above brash partisan politics."
For his part, Massie thinks the Trump administration's full-court press against him may play out in his favor. In response to a post on Truth Social by Trump, who called him the "worst Republican congressman in history," Massie said Sunday on ABC News, "I think it's going to help my fundraising," and said that "every time" the historically unpopular president "tweets about me, it's good for some money coming in because people don't like that."
"How did this race become the most expensive race in the history of Congress for a primary?" he continued.
"It's because three billionaires from outside of Kentucky have funneled millions of dollars in here," he said, referencing the $2 million donated to the MAGA KY PAC by a trio of top pro-Israel billionaires—hedge fund manager Paul Singer, investor John Paulson, and a group linked to casino mogul Miriam Adelson—which has been used to fund ads accusing Massie of disloyalty to Trump.
He said these donors, and other groups spending big money to oust him, like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Republican Jewish Committee (RJC), were "all part of the Israeli lobby" backing his opponent. Massie has been the most vocal Republican critic of Israel, calling for US military aid to be cut off in response to the genocide in Gaza.
He said his race "will be a referendum on foreign policy and whether Israel gets to dictate that by bullying members of Congress," adding, "I'm the one they haven't been able to bully."
Massie claimed he was "ahead in the polls" and that the Trump camp was "desperate."
"That's why they're sending the secretary of war to my district... That's why the president's losing sleep and tweeting about this. That's why AIPAC has dumped another $3 million into my race this weekend," he said. "It's because they're panicked."
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