President Trump got more wins in Republican primaries Tuesday, most notably in Kentucky.
There, Rep. Thomas Massie lost to a Trump-backed candidate after the president and his allies blitzed Massie with tens of millions in ads.
In fact, this was the most expensive House primary in history with $33 million total spent on TV ads and a lot of it aimed at Massie, according to NPR ad-tracking partner AdImpact.
While Trump continues to rack up victories on his vengeance tour, general-election opponents are waiting in swing districts and swing states, and Trump is a double-edged sword — popular with the base but unpopular with more than half the country.
Can front-line Republican candidates navigate these choppy waters? And what comes next?
Here are four takeaways from Tuesday night's elections:
1. Trump flexes muscle (again) in Republican primaries
Trump made it clear again that he's the Alpha Dog in Republican Party politics.
Massie became the latest, high-profile political casualty Tuesday night. Trump said all he needed was a "warm body" to pluck the thorn-in-Trump's-side that Massie had become.
And in Ed Gallrein, who served in the Navy as a SEAL officer, Trump said he got that warm body — with "a big, beautiful brain." In the end, it wasn't a very close race, a 10-point margin.
Following Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy's primary loss in Louisiana Saturday, this week has been a punctuation mark on Trump's strength with the party. In addition to Massie and Cassidy losing, another Trump foe, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, also did not advance to a runoff for Georgia governor Tuesday night.
Raffensperger was at the center of the 2020 presidential election controversy in the state when Trump pressured him to overturn the election results there that saw Democrat Joe Biden narrowly win the state. Raffensperger refused to go along and now joins a list of Republicans whose political careers were shortened because GOP voters punished them after their opposition to Trump.
2. Primaries aren't general elections, though. Georgia, in particular, is a good reminder of that
The Senate primaries in Georgia and Alabama were also all about candidates trying to out-MAGA each other. They hugged Trump as closely as possible to get through those contests.
Trump certainly showed his strength in these Republican primaries, but primaries aren't general elections, and Alabama and Georgia, while neighbors, have become very different states. They both have conservative primary electorates, but Alabama is a much more conservative general election state. Georgia is much more purple and has two Democratic senators. One of them, Jon Ossoff, is a top GOP target this fall.
It's worth remembering that, as the Republican primary heads to a runoff between the top two vote-getters on June 16, Trump may be popular with rank-and-file conservative voters, but he's equally, if not more, unpopular with swing voters according to polls, focus groups and reports. His approval ratings are among the lowest of either of his terms as president, especially on the economy — the top issue for voters. This has been the Trump quandary for Republicans for as long as he's been the leader of the party. Republicans need him to turn out the base, but he's toxic with independents and now with lots of crossover voting groups, who cast ballots for him in 2024, like Latinos, according to polls.
In a general election in a place like Georgia, Republicans have to be careful not to look too extreme, if they want to have a chance of unseating Ossoff in November.
3. Pay attention to the economic messaging by GOP candidates in swing districts
One way to do that is to focus on kitchen-table issues. The economy and prices in particular continue to be voters' top concerns. Let's zoom in on a place where that economic swing-district messaging is going to be tested, one that always seems to be full of bellwethers — Pennsylvania.
There are three congressional races here, in fact, that the Cook Political Report rates as toss-ups. That includes the 7th congressional district in the Lehigh Valley. It features freshman Republican Rep. Ryan Mackenzie, who will now face off against Democrat Bob Brooks, the state firefighters union president.
Mackenzie's focus has been on the economy — and how he believes he's helped working-class voters. In an ad with about $225,000 behind it, according to AdImpact, Mackenzie stresses that he "voted for working family tax cuts that mean higher wages and lower taxes for working families, no tax on tips and no tax on overtime." He mentions wanting to expand health savings accounts, as well, and keeps a hard line on immigration.
Is that a winning message? It will be tested, as Republicans in these kinds of districts are trudging uphill right now given the national political environment and as Democrats look to flip this district Trump won by 3 points in 2024 and narrowly lost four years earlier. Trump's economic approval ratings are in the 30s, and people are blaming him for higher prices, according to the polls.
Democrats, meanwhile, are promoting Brooks as "one of us" – "a firefighter, snowplow driver, and union leader" who will "stand up to corporate greed and a corrupt political system." It's a left-wing, working-class populist message that will also be tested – as will Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro's political strength in this key presidential state, as he eyes a potential run for higher office in 2028.
4. Trump looks to keep riding high in the saddle — in Texas
Trump looks to finish off a May sweep in the Lone Star state. On Tuesday, Trump made the surprise move of endorsing Ken Paxton, the controversial state attorney general, in the Republican primary runoff against Republican Sen. John Cornyn. Trump had pledged to endorse after Cornyn failed to reach the 50%-plus threshold to win the primary outright.
The smart money was on Trump to endorse Cornyn to avoid a messy, drawn-out primary — and to safely keep this Senate seat in Republican hands. Operatives close to Trump were working for Cornyn, and that seemed to be the way things were headed. But then Paxton came out strongly in support of the SAVE America Act, the voting law that Trump has championed that would require not just voter ID, but birth certificates or passports to register to vote.
That seemed to put a pause on Trump's endorsement of anyone — until Tuesday when Trump flipped the script and went with the uber-MAGA Paxton. Make no mistake: this puts Texas on the map. Texas was seen as a likely much easier win for Republicans in November with Cornyn as the GOP nominee than if it's Paxton.
Paxton will still likely be the slight favorite over the Democratic nominee, state Rep. James Talarico. This is Texas, after all, and no Democrat has won statewide since 1994. But Republicans now are going to have to back up the money truck to try to save this seat — and it will be super expensive. Look for Trump's political action committee, MAGA Inc., with its deep war chest and now Trump's endorsement, to play heavily to try to keep this seat red.
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