"Everybody Got Their Something" (6:01 read time)
You never know what the final straw's gonna be for a person. Treason, insurrection, sexual predation, the proliferation of mass human suffering, or dinking around with the Good Ol' Boys Club.
Evening of Tuesday, May 19, 2026:
I know I’ll be posting this at the end of the week, after the primaries of Tuesday, May 19. But as I start to type, here, it’s Tuesday night and I don’t yet know if my preferred candidate has won the Republican nomination for U.S. representative of Kentucky’s 4th district.
That’s right, the reason I haven’t been able to bring myself to write a CeeGee for so long is because…well, there’s no easy way to say it, so I’ll just say it. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em—I’m a Republican now, and I’ve traded in Bernie Sanders for the Bluegrass State’s Thomas Massie as my new political hero!
OK, that’s not entirely true. And by “not entirely true,” I mean it’s entirely false. I’m not even a Democrat anymore, let alone a Republican. And Bernie Sanders is still my political hero.
(My hero-hero, really. He’s going on 85 and leading the fight for AI regulation and against money in politics. Here he is going up against a Claude bot and speaking about the bill he’s introducing with Rep. Summer Lee, who’s about a half-century his junior.)
That said, Rep. Thomas Massie, the current U.S. House member representing KY-04—a guy who famously, and rather incredibly, partnered with Bernie acolyte Rep. Ro Khanna to force the release of the Epstein Files—is my preferred candidate in today’s (last Tuesday’s) primary, where he’s neck-and-neck with his Trump-appointed fellow dairy-farmer opponent, Ed Gallrein.
This race was arguably the day’s top story—even on a day when the U.S. Senate surprisingly pushed through a War Powers Resolution that would force the president to halt the Iran War or get their authorization to continue (as required, incidentally, by a wee little antique document called the Constitution).
To be sure, nothing will come of this resolution. The Senate will need to vote on it again; and then the House will need to vote on it; and once it’s passed by both (NOTE: it will not be passed by both), all that has to happen is for Trump to sign it into law. Which he definitely will not do. (What he will probably do instead is rent out Capital One Arena and sell tickets for $100 a pop to watch him veto the shit outta that shit.)
Afternoon of Wednesday, May 20, 2026:
Aaaaaaand…Massie lost. By TEN POINTS, he lost. To a guy who truly, unapologetically, and very purposefully had no other goals or agenda for his prospective stint in D.C. beyond doing what the president told him to do:
“I’m gonna go to Speaker Johnson and the president and JD [Vance],” Gallrein told The New York Times [gift article], “[and] I’m gonna say, ‘Where do you need me, coach?’”
I was hopeful Massie would win because, despite his mostly odious political instincts, the guy refused to kiss the ring of King Donald. And after listening to the Daily podcast the Times published on Primary Day morning [see below], it sounded like a whole lot of Kentuckians respected him for that.
So…bummer. Massie wasn’t blown out or anything, but more GOP voters in the commonwealth wanted their representative to devote himself to Trump than to Kentucky. It truly is In Trump We Trust.
A constituent made that eerily clear at a Massie rally featured in that Daily episode [see below]. These are my words, but his point was: Trump gets more information than you do, he knows what to do with it better than you do, and so if he says the Epstein Files can’t be released, the most capable and accomplished man in the world must have a good reason. Do I want to see the Epstein Files, too? Sure. Did we positively shriek for you guys to get off your asses and bust those elite monsters who molested those young girls? Indeed. But My President said releasing them would be just about tantamount to treason. So that’s that! He knows what he’s doing and you need to lay off him and let him work—like I voted for you to do.
Massie answered, “I don’t give anybody but God that kind of trust.”
And the audio suggests the audience really quite loudly cheered that sentiment. Which made me hopeful it might have put things in perspective for enough folks who love the Lord that Massie would eek out a win, providing us the clearest example yet that Trump’s Midas touch is tarnishing.
But NOPE! Not to be. In fact, I wonder how many from that audience who cheered Massie’s answer promptly walked down to their polling place, secured a voting booth, got to the District 4 line—and sensed a kind of sneering presence over their shoulder, breathing heavily, smelling of McNuggets and BBQ sauce…and tapped “GALLREIN” with a sigh and a gentle shudder.
Afternoon of Friday, May 22, 2026:
Aaaaaaand…now the public figure I probably trust most about political goings-on (other than Bernie) is suggesting the Trump administration might have finally jumped the shark! Writer/historian and No. 1 Substacker Heather Cox Richardson isn’t one to hyperbolize, so, it must be happening! It’s really happening! We’re gonna win the House! We’re gonna win the Senate! We’re gonna impeach! YEEE-Ahhhh!!
Even a gaggle of Republican senators are trashing this notion that Trump can (indirectly, of course) redirect $1.776 billion from taxpayers to those wronged by the evil Biden administration’s weaponization campaigns against them.
So Kentuckians voted out Rep. Thomas Massie on Tuesday, almost entirely because he would not blindly follow the figurehead of the movement they blindly follow. Even though, if they were to peruse Massie’s platform of issues, most would no doubt agree with every single one of them—including the two that most placed Massie in Trump’s crosshairs (namely Epstein and Iran).
And, indeed, a few days before that, Sen. Bill Cassidy got ousted in Louisiana after Trump sicced MAGA on him for voting to impeach in 2021. And a few days before that, all but one of the seven state senators in Indiana who refused Trump’s directive to illegally redistrict the state were unseated by Trump-endorsed challengers.
Plus, Trump decided to support Texas’s “morally challenged” (as Maine’s GOP Sen. Susan Collins called him) Attorney General Ken Paxton instead of longtime congressional stalwart Sen. John Cornyn in their bitter Republican primary.
So here’s the ultimate boys clubber in Trump, emasculating the Senate and busting up their cherished and time-honored Good Ol’ Boys Club.
Last night, when I first read that the Senate was opposing the Trump “anti-weaponization” slush fund, my first thought was, Finally, they’re coming to their senses. But by morning I came to my cynical senses. I realized, Oh, they’re really just getting back at Trump for torpedoing their fraternity buddies, aren’t they?
And then Crooked Media’s “What a Day” newsletter covered a statement made by MAGA maestro Steve Bannon:
MAGA Godfather Steve Bannon has a theory: The defiance isn’t about Trump’s weaponization fund. Instead, Senate Republicans are going against the president because they’re mad that he ousted Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and didn’t endorse Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in his contentious primary…
“Cassidy and Cornyn [are] the reason these guys are up in arms,” Bannon said on his WarRoom podcast…”
So I guess great minds like Thomas Massie’s, Steve Bannon’s, and mine think alike.
To close, below is a highly recommended appearance by Heather Cox Richardson on another Substack podcast, The Borowitz Report, using historical precedent to (kind of) predict Trumpism’s downfall. Listener questions include, What can we do to best help pro-democracy candidates win in November? Her answer provides some encouraging perspective: