Thomas Massie's Ouster Is More Proof of the GOP's Ongoing Commitment to Purging Antisemitism
Thomas Massie's humiliating loss in Kentucky shows that at least one party is serious about policing antisemitism. It's the Republican Party.
I have a book coming out in a couple of weeks about why the Left turned on the Jews. It’s called The Jews and the Left, and as I was preparing to submit my manuscript to my editor, a small cadre of podcasters who had traditionally been associated with the Right started to make increasingly anti-Israel and even antisemitic comments. It began slowly, but after Charlie Kirk’s assassination, hostility to Jews and Jewish interests began to surge in the podcaster sphere, with some figures turning their hatred of Israel and the Jews who support it (somewhere between 80-90%) into an entire personality.
You had Tucker Carlson invite a Holocaust revisionist onto his show—not once but twice—and then follow that up with a cozy interview with avowed antisemite Nick Fuentes. You had Marjorie Taylor Greene start accusing Israel of buying our politics and committing genocide. You had Candace Owens go full antisemite. These people also became obsessed with Jeffery Epstein, painting him as a Mossad agent running an international pedophile ring, a conspiracy theory the Epstein files debunked, and they started devoting huge amounts of their content to bashing Israel. When Trump went to war with Iran, they called it “Israel’s war” and broke with Trump, calling him a puppet bought by the Jewish State.
It was distressing. I started to wonder if I was wrong that antisemitism was a much bigger problem on the Left than on the Right. If major Right-wing influencers had turned on the Jews in such a blatant way, didn’t this mean that the problem was truly one shared by both sides?
This is what I imagine will be the biggest objection to my book: Sure, there are unsavory characters on the Left, but isn’t the Right worse?
Actually, no.
Because while antisemites exist on both sides, there has been a massive effort underway on the Right to cleanse their ranks of these bottom feeders, while on the Left, people hostile to Jews and Jewish interests are being embraced, campaigned with, and celebrated, even elevated to celebrity status.
Today’s biggest headline is the latest example of this.
Congressman Thomas Massie was absolutely trounced in his Kentucky race against Trump-backed retired Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, losing by a humiliating nine points when the final tally came in. It’s true that Gallrein had secured Trump’s endorsement, but it wasn’t new for Massie to run against a Trump-backed candidate, and last time he won handily.
What was new was that Massie built his entire campaign around antisemitic dogwhistles—even bullhorns—about Jewish money undermining American interests. He went on the podcasts mentioned above, as well as many Leftist ones, to promote his anti-Israel message. He made an obsession with Epstein his entire personality and his only legislative goal, stymying the President’s agenda whenever he could. He campaigned with actual Nazis, and he accused American Jews who are pro-Israel of having dual loyalties and undermining American interests.
Massie was always anti-war, but his criticism of Trump’s foreign policy took on a nasty tone that went much further than legitimate critique, as evidenced by the company he kept.
And for his pains, Kentucky vomited him out of public office.
Never a man burdened by the accusation that he possesses an abundance of class, Massie took one last antisemitic swipe on his way out. “I had to call my opponent to concede, and it took a while to find him in Tel Aviv,” Massie said in his concession speech.
It wasn’t only about Jews, of course. Trump effectively campaigned against Massie because, in a district that went for Trump by 30 points, in which Trump is still 10 points above water in his approval ratings, Massie was a thorn in Trump’s side and a spoke in the wheel of Trump’s agenda. As one woman told me on my NewsNation podcast, she stopped voting for Massie because she expected her Congresspeople to help the President she elected, not hurt him.
But it’s not an accident that the same people who have turned on Trump have turned on Israel and the Jews that support it. In both instances, they have turned against their voters, the MAGA base, instead following the clarion call of clicks and online engagement, forming their views to suit the demands of the YouTube comments section, and misreading them for the views of middle America.
Massie’s ouster proved the lengths the Right will go to repudiate gross views on Jews. But it also proved once again how divorced the Podcastariat is from the MAGA voter. They are influencers without influence—not least because of their anti-Trump and anti-Jewish sentiments.
Make no mistake about it: Massie’s humiliating ouster was no one off.
When Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation came out in support of Tucker Carlson interviewing Nick Fuentes, he faced a massive revolt from within his own organization, with mass resignations following soon after. On my NewsNation show “Batya!” I’ve had Republican congressmen, senators, and members of the President’s cabinet come out in full force against Carlson and the efforts to mainstream antisemitism on the Right. Trump himself basically kicked Carlson, Owens, MTG, and others out of the party in a series of social media posts calling them “Low IQ” among other insults.
Meanwhile, on the Left, an antisemite like Hasan Piker is praised, mainstreamed, campaigned with, and sanitized. Someone who doesn’t believe Israel should exist as a Jewish state like Zohran Mamdani is lauded as the future. Accusing Israel of genocide is the cost of entry, and the word Zionist has become a slur. Being pro-Israel, as the vast majority of Jews are, is a non-starter.
The two sides are not the same. The Right may have antisemites—but the party is easily and eagerly purging itself of them. The Left is plagued by antisemitism—because it is embracing its antisemites.
Good riddance to a disgusting anti-Semite, evidenced once again by his concession speech last night.
https://www.jns.org/opinion/robert-isler/the-unapologetic-antisemite-in-congress
I really don't understand what is happening in my country. Iran has been waging a warm war against us for 47 years while threatening the future of the planet with their nuclear weapons development program. We finally have a president that takes decisive, pro-active action to stop it and he gets piled on, even though most of his critics agree that Iran can never go nuclear, simply because it's causing a temporary increase in the price of fuel. Whatever happened to JFK's creed for America?: "Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and success of liberty." It's the same with Rev. MLK's hope for a colorblind America. Both men may have been killed by an assassin's bullet, but it took the modern progressive/DNC/anti-Trump movements to bury them under 1,000 feet of stupid bigotry.
Cassidy lost his primary and in an idiotic, knee-jerk reaction against Trump and a nuclear-free Iran, he switches his vote on the Jackassery's War Powers Resolution. If this passes, it guarantees the survival of the terrorist islamist regime in Tehran, thoroughly fucks over the Persian people, almost assures that the mullahs will become a nuclear power, risks a high-chance nuclear exchange with Israel & America, and dishonors the sacrifices of the pro-freedom Persians and the U.S. military. It's Biden's Bagram BugOut all over again, but with far more severe consequences.
I won't get into the rapid rise of anti-semitism and pro-Hamas/Hezbullah movements here. Thoroughly disgusted with those villains. Batya does an excellent job exposing them and with far greater grace than I would ever offer.