Tucker Responds to the Israel Lobby Defeating Thomas Massie and Killing MAGA

On the morning of Trump’s January 2025 inauguration, Tucker Carlson attended a prayer service at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington and watched Miriam Adelson — an Israeli-born billionaire, widow of Sheldon Adelson, and the largest donor to Trump’s campaign — bypass the security line and walk in ahead of everyone else. He hoped it wasn’t an omen. It was.

• Carlson and Charlie Kirk sat together in the pew that morning, both genuinely believing Trump would serve American citizens first, end foreign wars, drain the swamp, and reform a Republican Party that now controlled the entire federal government.
• Less than 18 months later, Kirk was assassinated, Trump had pivoted to cheerleading a regime-change war against Iran, covering up the Epstein files, expanding surveillance, and bragging about his 99% approval in Israel while sitting at 35% at home. The morning’s hope had curdled into something unrecognizable.

The first crack was the Epstein files.

• Trump had promised repeatedly to declassify the Epstein records along with other sealed government files, arguing that secrecy exists to hide corruption — a promise that was the emotional core of “drain the swamp.”
• Instead, Trump became hysterically defensive, telling supporters who asked about Epstein that they were not his supporters and that the topic was a “Democrat hoax.” This was a shock to people who had campaigned for him.
• Carlson’s theory: Trump is not covering up personal involvement in sex crimes (which would almost be easier to explain). He is covering up for the very ruling class he was elected to expose.
• Epstein himself is a symbol of systemic corruption — he won a $30 million Powerball jackpot in Oklahoma under unexplained circumstances, was arrested in 2019 on the same charges he’d been given a federal non-prosecution agreement for in 2006, and was murdered a month later in a federal detention center during Trump’s first term, when Bill Barr — whose father had given Epstein his first job — was Attorney General. No one has ever been held accountable.

Thomas Massie became the test case for what happens when a Republican defies the new orthodoxy.

• Massie is the only one of 217 Republicans in Congress who has never taken money from the Israeli lobby (AIPAC). He is not anti-Israel and has never said anything anti-Semitic. His position is purely fiscal and constitutional: the United States is bankrupt and cannot afford foreign aid to any country, including Israel, which receives more than any other nation and returns nothing of strategic value.
• Massie also publicly demanded the release of the Epstein files, making him a double threat to the establishment.
• Trump, working with his biggest donors — Miriam Adelson, Paul Singer, and John Paulson — poured over $35 million into the Republican primary in Kentucky’s 4th District to defeat Massie, making it the most expensive House primary in American history. For context, a typical Republican primary in such a district might cost $500,000 to $2 million.
• Massie’s opponent, Ed Gaetzler (whose name even the media couldn’t consistently pronounce), ran on a platform of reinstating the draft — arguably the least popular campaign promise imaginable — and refused to debate Massie even once. He won on mail-in ballots at a victory party that appeared nearly empty.

The media and political establishment coordinated the attack on Massie from every direction.

• CBS News — itself owned by a major IDF contributor — asked Massie “Are you anti-Semitic? Yes or no” as a gotcha question, ignoring his actual arguments about foreign aid. This is the same tactic used by self-described “far-right” voices like Mark Levin, who called Massie a supporter of Hamas, Hezbollah, and “Islamic jihad” — labels so detached from reality they would be funny if they weren’t effective.
• The point is not that Massie was going to single-handedly change policy. One vote out of 217 was never going to stop aid to Israel. The point is that he was willing to say the quiet part out loud: there is an Israel lobby, it operates in the interests of a foreign country, and its members’ loyalty is not to the United States. That truth, spoken plainly, is what had to be punished.

AIPAC publicly bragged about defeating Massie, confirming what they deny everywhere else.

• Minutes after Massie lost, AIPAC tweeted: “Pro-Israel Americans are proud to help defeat anti-Israel candidates. Being pro-Israel is good policy and good politics.” This is an unregistered foreign lobby openly claiming credit for removing a sitting member of Congress — something that would be a scandal if it were any other foreign country.
• Carlson’s point: if you said this about any other nation — that its lobbyists were selecting American legislators — it would be dismissed as a conspiracy theory. But AIPAC said it themselves, and no one in power cares.

The Trump administration has now made criticism of Israel functionally a crime.

• The DOJ, led by Leo Terrell (a Fox News contributor with 11 IRS liens against him), has launched a multi-city “anti-Semitism” tour to intimidate critics of Israel. States like Florida under Ron DeSantis have passed laws treating criticism of Israel as a hate crime.
• The administration’s position is that noticing the influence of a foreign lobby is itself hate. Rather than making the case for why supporting Israel benefits Americans, they are using the machinery of the state to enforce silence.
• Carlson calls this a “humiliation exercise” — a way of telling ordinary Americans that the system is not theirs, that billionaires and foreign interests decide outcomes, and that their only role is to comply.

Rich Baris, a Republican pollster, confirms that this is a political catastrophe for the GOP.

• Massie was beating Gaetzler 3-to-1 among millennials. The only reason Gaetzler won is that the $35 million campaign drove out older “Fox News boomer” voters — a demographic that is a minority even within its own age cohort but dominates Republican primaries because younger voters don’t show up.
• Baris notes that Trump’s coalition has not just split — it has fractured, shrunk, and transformed. Among Republicans under 30, MAGA identification has dropped from 56% to 36%. Among millennials (30-45), it has fallen from 66% to 40%. The coalition is now older and more traditionally Republican, which is the opposite of what Trump built.
• The generic ballot for the midterms shows Democrats up 11 points — worse than 2018, which was already a wave election. Republicans redistricted to protect themselves, but an 11-point deficit overwhelms gerrymanders. Baris says Republicans are going to get “creamed.”
• The two events that broke the coalition were the Epstein cover-up (July 2025) and the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites — a “one-two combo” that knocked MAGA down.

The Iran war was never sold to the public and never became popular.

• Support started at about 21% and opposition at roughly 70%, and it has returned to that level. Americans were asked before the war whether they would tolerate casualties or gas price spikes — the answer to both was zero.
• Foreign policy has not cracked above 7th place in voter priorities at any point during Trump’s current term. A White House focus tracker shows over 60% of voters believe Trump is too focused on foreign policy and not enough on domestic issues.
• Carlson notes that every previous president at least attempted to sell a war to the public — George H.W. Bush spent months on the incubator story, George W. Bush used WMDs and post-9/11 momentum. Trump didn’t even try.

The draft is back on the table, which Carlson finds genuinely alarming.

• Gaetzler ran on reinstating the draft. The White House, when asked, refused to rule it out. Baris notes that even amnesty — unthinkable under Trump a few years ago — is now being seriously pushed by the administration, with Trump appearing alongside one of the most pro-amnesty Republicans in Congress.
• Carlson’s read: the neocons’ project is not just to support Israel but to destroy the United States, and a draft serves that purpose by sending American children to die in foreign wars while the domestic population is demoralized and compliant.

The betrayal is so complete that it may actually be the beginning of something better.

• Carlson argues that the system has now been fully exposed. What people whispered about — that a small number of foreign-aligned billionaires control outcomes — has been proven in public, in real time, with AIPAC’s own victory tweet as evidence.
• The Republican Party as it exists now bears no resemblance to the one elected 18 months ago. Its slogans, priorities, and coalition are completely different. It is not a vehicle for the people who voted for it.
• Baris compares the moment to George H.W. Bush’s “read my lips” betrayal, which fractured the GOP coalition and led to the Ross Perot movement. Something new will eventually rise from the ashes — whether it’s genuine reform or another fake reset like Obama remains to be seen.
• Carlson’s closing thought: the truth is always worth telling, and a politics based on anything but the truth is always poisonous. This is a low point, but it is not the end. It is the beginning.