The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump's revenge tour ousts Massie in Kentucky. Is Texas next?

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

President Trump wasn't on the ballot in Tuesday’s primaries, but he notched a victory when the challenger he backed defeated Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie. We discuss Massie's loss and other primary election results from Tuesday, as well as Trump’s new endorsement in the upcoming Republican primary run-off in Texas' Senate race.This episode: senior political correspondent Tamara Keith, political reporter Stephen Fowler, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's Tam. And if the NPR Politics Podcast is part of your daily ritual, you can make it official on the NPR app. You will hear about every episode the moment it's ready. Just turn on notifications and we will handle the rest. To get there, download the NPR app today. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Stephen Fowler. I also cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, President Trump's retribution campaign notches another win. Republican Congressman Thomas Massey of Kentucky was defeated by a Trump-backed challenger. And in Texas, the president finally endorsed a Republican Senate candidate, and it's not the incumbent. So, Stephen, let's start with that election and Congressman Massey's loss. Was it a surprise?

No. The writing was on the truth social wall for a long time. When you look at the way the Republican Party has operated since Trump returned to power, there has been very little room for dissent and some very notable examples of said dissent. With Massey, you had the push to release the Epstein files where he was on the wrong side of Trump. You have the Iran War and other military actions where he's on the wrong side of Trump. You even had him as one of the few people to vote against the one big beautiful bill act on the Republican side. Again, on the wrong side of Trump.

So in a time when the Republican Party is almost completely unified in lockstep with President Trump, we are seeing the few people past and present that have had those gaps finally have the primary reckoning with voters who say they like what Trump says. And the reality is when Trump targets you in a Republican primary. you're probably in trouble. And, you know, we saw millions of dollars, tens of millions of dollars in ads unleashed in this race. $33 million spent on TV ads, according to our partner ad impact,

which tracks ads. And they say that is the most ever for House primary. So a really, you know, unbelievable amount of money that was just pouring in to try to defeat Massey. And if you ask any member of Congress, the last thing that they want to have, have to be doing because they're up for re-election every two years is to have to be walking the hallways on the phone with donors trying to raise money for re-election, which is why so many seats

have become safer and why so many Republicans just don't cross Trump. They don't want the trouble. Yeah. And this was for Trump very important because it is an exertion of his power. And he is never more powerful than he is in a Republican primary in a red state. But that exertion of power then sends a signal to other Republicans don't get out of line. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, we saw that exertion of power on Saturday when it came to incumbent Bill Cassidy, the senator in Louisiana, who lost his primary and didn't get through to the runoff. We saw it in Georgia as well on Tuesday night in Alabama. Georgia, I think, is the most fascinating one because that's a state with a very conservative Republican electorate, the primary electorate, but a very very, very middle of the road, moderate, purple general election electorates, a state with two Democratic incumbent senators, one of which John Ossoff is up for re-election and is a top Republican

target. But now Republicans have another four weeks of trying to outmagge each other as they had been in the primary. Yeah, Stephen, let's talk about Georgia. What did you learn from those primaries. Well, like Domenico said, there's another four weeks of a very expensive primary contest in the U.S. Senate race and also in the governor's race. Trump endorsed the sitting lieutenant governor Jones, who is very loyal to Trump, but then a few months ago, you had this billionaire health care executive, Rick Jackson, come out of nowhere, spend, you know, well north of 80 million dollars of his own money so far to convince Georgia Republican voters that actually he is the pro-Trump guy. And in many ways it worked because the two of them are now heading to a runoff and just had complete market saturation over the airways and the flyers in my mailbox from all the campaign ads.

And the big takeaway, even as Georgia is the purple state with the split electorate, as you mentioned, we are heading towards more weeks of Trump. Trump, Trump. In the gubernatorial primary, you had people who spoke out against Trump or at least didn't go along with what Trump wanted. And Brad Raffensberger, the Secretary of State in the state, who Trump tried to pressure to get to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. He did not go along. He wound up not even making it to the runoff in the gubernatorial primary on the Republican side. And on the Democratic side, he had former lieutenant governor Jeff Duncan, who also spoke out against Trump. And he had been a Republican in, 2020 election. He also did not qualify for the runoff. You could get the impression that President

Trump is all powerful from this, but I don't think that that's necessarily truly the lesson. No, it's not. In fact, you know, there's probably some kind of superhero kind of metaphor here where, you know, you've got somebody who is all powerful on, you know, half of the planet. And then as soon as he crosses a line to the other side of the planet, he sort of shrivels and shrinks because, frankly, half the country is strongly disapproving of the job that Trump is doing. He is a main motivator for why Democrats have so much strength when it comes to looking down the line here to November. Swing states, swing districts. Democrats have been having victory after victory in special elections, overperforming, and they're just waiting to go after some of these candidates who are hugging

Trump closely, even though Trump has highly negative disapproval ratings in the country. His economic approval is in the 30s. But because we're talking about this one little world of the Republican primary, he looks all powerful, but there's a whole different set of elections coming in a few months. Stephen, while we're still in Georgia, can you talk about the lessons that might be taken away from what we saw on the Democratic side? Well, John Oshoff did not have a primary challenger, so he has just steadily been fundraising a massive war chest for that expensive November contest. In the governor's race, you actually didn't have a runoff. Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms won outright, even though she had many challengers. She had people within the party

expressed concern that Bottoms did not run for a second term as the mayor of Atlanta and have the Republican attacks that have already come out over Bottoms' leadership of the city during 2020 when there were a lot of racial justice protests and other issues. But it was a pretty decisive victory for her. And it makes sense when you look at the overall turnout of the primary. Democrats, especially black Democrats, older Democrats, turned out in force and very much outvoted Republicans, which has Democrats very excited about what that means for them heading into November. Wait, so just so I'm clear on this, you're saying that more Democrats turned out in these primaries where there weren't really big contests than turned out in the Republican primaries where there were these big contests? Tens of millions of more dollars were spent on the Republican side and 160,000 or so more votes came on the Democratic side.

So even with all of that attention and all of the intrigue and contests, Democratic, Democratic. Democrats showed up in force like they have in basically every other state that's had a midterm so far this year and in previous special elections and everything for the last year and a half. And that's because Democrats are fired up in many respects to vote this fall as the party out of power usually is in a president's first midterms. All right. We're going to take a quick break and we'll have more in a moment. We're back. And the wait is finally over for a Trump endorsement in the Republican Senate primary in. Texas after what had to have been the longest, will he or won't he saga, Trump through his support behind Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent Senator John Cornyn. Domenico, how does that endorsement just one week before the runoff affect this race?

Yeah, it's a major thing in this race, especially since you've seen, as we talked about, how much Trump's endorsement has mattered in Republican primaries. And, you know, the smart money early on was on that Trump would endorse Cornyn potentially because you have a lot of operatives close to Trump who work with Cornyn. The thinking was that they didn't want to have a long, drawn-out battle to promote someone like Ken Paxton who is controversial in the state and could make the state more likely for Democrats to win than if the incumbent John Cornyn was the person on the ballot again. But the longer this went on, it became clear that Trump probably wasn't going to endorse anyone and then surprised everyone by endorsing Paxton and flipping the script. And that certainly could be the thing that winds up propelling Paxton here.

Maybe the White House was seeing internal polling, showing Paxton leading anyway. And Trump wanted to get out ahead of that and look like he was with the winner. But Paxton had made a really savvy move in this, according to Republicans that I talked to, who said that when he came out, and endorse the Save America Act, which not only requires photo ID to vote, but you would need birth certificate or passport to even register to vote, that when he came out and did that, it was for that audience of one. Trump really liked his fire and that he was going to back whatever it is that Trump wanted. And he wants that fealty. And I think he's feeling himself, frankly, this month. And he's looking for a sweep during his revenge tour here in the month of May.

Not that he necessarily dislikes John Cornyn, but he feels like, Paxton is a stronger Maga warrior. Yeah, I mean, Cornyn is more an establishment Republican figure. He's been in the Senate a really long time. And I mean, Stephen, we have been, you especially have been tracking President Trump's endorsements. And this one comes pretty late. And as Domenico alluded to at a point where polls were starting to show that Paxton was pulling ahead potentially. It's a little bit of a chicken in the egg situation.

Is it possible that Paxton was going to prevail without Trump's endorsement? Yes. Will Trump's endorsement help Paxton prevail? Probably also yes. But you're right. In 2026 especially, Trump's endorsements have come way earlier in the primary process. They have focused on safe incumbents. And in the case of open races, he's done things to clear the field to really make sure that there aren't any challengers for the people that he likes.

And then you have these few examples of those that have still wronged him in some way that he has gone after full force. So it's been surprising that there's been several weeks of this additional kind of knockdown, drag-out fight for the runoff instead of settling it. Like he said, he posted on Truth Social the day after the primary saying this race should end now. And then he didn't actually pull the trigger on endorsing anyone. So what this does, same with the Georgia runoffs, is just make more. time, more money, more energy on Republican infighting, and has Republicans worried about what that could do for the race in November? I was going to say, let's be clear, this is going to put Texas on the map now as a real

potential Democratic takeover if Paxton winds up winning. You know, you'd probably still say Paxton would be the slight favorite against state representative James Tala Rico, the Democrat, only because this is Texas and there's been no Democrat that's one statewide since 1994. And better believe that the dump truck of money is going to be backed up on this race big time. If you live in Texas, our apologies for the amount of political activity you are going to see because the Republican governor there, Greg Abbott, I'm told, is not going to let this state go blue without a big, big fight. And now that Trump has put his endorsement on Paxton, he's got a lot of skin in this game, too.

And that means that hundreds of millions of dollars that are in his Super PAC MAGA, Inc, a lot of that money might be sucked right into Texas. Well, I mean, that's what people in Texas might want. That's what Republican candidates all over the country want. And it's not clear where Trump is actually going to spend that money in the end. That's one of the big mysteries of this campaign season. Well, a lot of operatives that I talked to said that they just, they're slapping their foreheads a little bit at this move because the fact that you have all this money in MAGA, Inc, that could be used to try to shore up some of those swing state and swing seat Republicans in a lot of places when what's expected to be a pretty narrow potential takeover for Democrats if they do win the House. But, you know, I don't know that Trump

really cares. Yeah, I want to talk about forms of consequences here of what's been happening in the primaries because it turns out primaries are not when races finish. That's voters get the final say in November. So I want to start first with, you know, we've been talking about all of these candidates who, Republican candidates who have been like out competing each other to be like, no, I'm the most Trump loyal candidate. No, I'm the most Trump loyal candidate. But as we said, President Trump has record low approval ratings. So is there a risk that things that happen in the primary could have consequences in the general election? I think that the primary is going to have consequences in a couple ways. Number one, it's going to have consequences in a general election.

And if these MAGA candidates or Republican candidates outmaga each other continue to sound out of step with the rest of the country and the way that you poll in some of these positions, whether it's on the economy or immigration or whatnot, how they make their message is going to be really important to see how they're able to thread that needle. Secondly, now you've got a lot of YOLO members of Congress who are left who aren't going to necessarily care about not crossing Trump, considering that they're no longer going to. to be there. I mean, Mass, he said, hey, I got seven more months left, and he cited the Epstein files, which he forced a lot of the millions of pages to be released. They said that we took down a prince and several prominent people, and I got seven months left. So he's seeming like he's going to go ahead and do whatever it is that he feels like he's going to do and make Trump's life even more difficult over these next several months. You've got people like Tom Tillis, who's retiring, Senator from North Carolina, who's been speaking out repeatedly, especially against

Defense Secretary Pete Higgseth. And, you know, when you think about somebody like Marjorie Daler Green, who's already been speaking out from Georgia, Lauren Bobert now who Trump is going after, you've got a contingent of firebrands who Trump is going to have his hands full with. Well, and Senator Cassidy from Louisiana, not a firebrand, but immediately after losing his primary, went and voted with Democrats on a war powers resolution. So there are potential real consequences there for. the power the president is able to exert when there are people who owe you nothing and actually have a big reason to have a grudge and they're still in office and the margins are as narrow as they are, there are real consequences for the president. And Domenico called it the Yolo Caucus. I know that means you only live once, but in this case, it's you only lose once. You're already out. There's also a number of House Republicans and Senate Republicans that have already said that they are retiring or running for a different office in their state. So you potentially have this consequence and scenario where for the rest of this year, you could see a lot more willingness to do things differently in Congress than they have the last two years or not. And then when there's potentially Democratic power coming in, the caucus that will be there for Republicans is going to look very, very different than it did two years ago or 10 years ago. And it could have real electoral consequences.

I mean, we talked a little bit about Georgia. but think about a place like Pennsylvania, which has had a lot of bellwether seats. It's a bellwether state. And it's governor, Josh Shapiro, the Democrat there, backed several Democratic candidates who he feels are the kind of Democratic candidates who can win this fall. He's got his eye on a potential 2028 presidential run, all four of the candidates that he backed. One, there are three toss-up seats in the state. And one seat in particular, the seventh congressional district. features Ryan McKenzie, who's a Republican freshman incumbent. Trump won this district by just three

points in the Lehigh Valley in 2024. He lost it narrowly in 2020, a real swing seat. And Shapiro's candidate in that race, Bob Brooks, he's the president of the firefighters union statewide, he wound up winning. And McKenzie's message and Brooks's message, I think are going to be ones that we're talking about as it relates to the rest of the country because Republicans are facing this up battle when it comes to the economy. Mackenzie has been talking about trying to fight for working class families, voting for tax cuts, trying to expand health savings accounts, while still maintaining a hard line on immigration. Brooks, on the other hand, is waging a very left-wing populist working class campaign. And there's a bunch of those kinds of Democratic candidates

who've cropped up across the country. And I think it's going to be notable for which of those kinds of messages win out in this kind of environment. And also, of course, for some of that 28 intrigue and Josh Shapiro string. Yeah. And we should say that the primary in Pennsylvania was also yesterday. Yes. So we are seeing that develop. All right, well, there is a lot for us to keep watching as this election year unfold, but we're going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Stephen Powell. I also cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montaner, our senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.