President Donald Trump delivered a speech last week expressing concern about foreign powers interfering in U.S. elections, specifically in the 2020 presidential election. He singled out China in particular.
Time and study will determine the validity of the president’s claims.
What we do know for certain is that the most expensive House primary election in U.S. history just happened in May and supporters of a foreign power spent record amounts essentially to buy a seat in the U.S. Congress.
Trump’s latest claims led Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), who lost that primary election, to ask, “When’s the speech about Israeli interference in U.S. elections?”
Massie lost the Fourth Congressional District Kentucky U.S. House seat, which he has held for 14 years, to challenger Ed Gallrein, a candidate heavily backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and a host of other Israel lobby groups, which reportedly spent over $9 million on the race. The grand total was much higher, with Louisville Public Media reporting last week that “Most of the $37 million spent in the contentious GOP primary between Congressman Thomas Massie and Ed Gallrein was by PACs funded by pro-Trump billionaires, pro-Israel groups, and dark money.”
The “pro-Trump billionaires” are also powerful pro-Israel donors: casino mogul Miriam Adelson, hedge fund manager Paul Singer, and investor John Paulson.
Matt Brooks, CEO of the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), which spent nearly $4 million on the race, boasted at a victory party,
Let me say very clearly tonight, That was a fight worth having and a victory worth celebrating. Someone who repeatedly undermines support for Israel, traffics in isolationism at a moment of global danger and refuses to stand with the Jewish state when it matters most—there has to be consequences.
Translation: Massie is a consistent opponent of U.S. foreign aid, including to Israel, and he believes American tax dollars should be “spent improving things here at home, not waging war and genocide,” referring to the U.S.-Israel war on Iran and to U.S. funding of Israel’s assault on Gaza.
As RJC head Brooks noted, there were consequences for Massie prioritizing America first, compliments of the Israel lobby, which acts on behalf of a foreign country’s interests.
So Massie’s original question stands: When is Trump going to give a speech about the foreign interference in this Kentucky primary election?
Likely never. In addition to Israel’s American lobby, Gallrein was also endorsed by Trump, who had soured on Massie for a variety of other reasons, among them, the Kentucky congressman’s refusal to support the president’s “Big, Beautiful” spending bill last July and also Massie’s insistence that the Trump administration release the Epstein Files, the classified documents related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein (a promise once made by Trump himself).
If there was major foreign election interference in the Kentucky primary in May, and there was, the president had firmly sided with the outside player. Some foreign meddling in U.S. elections is apparently preferable to others.
This does raise questions about loyalty—loyalty to whom, or to what?
The president obviously wanted Massie defeated because he felt the Republican had been disloyal to him, personally, and to his agenda. That’s pure Trump. But he also effectively sided with Israel and its American supporters.
Another Trump critic from the right, podcasting giant Tucker Carlson, is now also the object of criticism from the president for his supposed disloyalty over many of the same issues that animate Massie.
In a recent interview, Carlson answered this charge with one of his own: “Trump has been disloyal to the United States—totally disloyal to the United States. He cheated on the United States with a foreign power.”
With the Trump administration continuing to fund the unending death in Gaza, starting the Iran war, and even siding with the interests of Israel, first and foremost, even if by default, in a Kentucky election, Carlson may have a point about this president.
On the eve of his primary election, a still-hopeful Thomas Massie told a reporter that his primary race was about “whether Israel gets to buy seats in Congress. And what they found out is that my seat is really expensive.”
It was extremely expensive, but in the end, a foreign country did essentially buy an American election via a powerful lobby that agitates on its behalf.
Don’t expect any White House concerns about this anytime soon.
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