by Ron Unz, The Unz Review:
The Latest Political Victim of the Israel Lobby
Last month a seven-term Republican Congressman from Kentucky named Thomas Massie lost his primary, and he will be leaving office at the end of the current session of the House.
Except in the case of severe personal scandals, such primary defeats were once extremely rare in our political life, and no such scandal had ever attached itself to Massie’s name. Instead, his votes and his ideology seemed to fit his rural district like a glove, and the MIT-educated engineer had never previously faced a serious challenge for renomination, winning his last few primaries with 75-80% of the vote, sometimes against well-funded opponents.
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As a staunch libertarian-leaning conservative in the Ron Paul mold, Massie had long made a name for himself by sometimes being at the short end of near-unanimous House votes on various issues. But I think that he first came to my attention when he was interviewed by Tucker Carlson a couple of years ago.
Rep. Thomas Massie doesn’t care what you think of him, which is pretty great.
(3:19) Where Does US Debt End?
(10:32) Why Massie Voted 15 Times Against Funding Israel
(14:53) AIPAC
(34:04) Mitch McConnell
(42:25) Area 51
(50:32) Massie’s Relationship with Trump
(57:09) Kill… pic.twitter.com/VBOiWjq056— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) June 7, 2024
In that two hour discussion Massie explained that although he had always been friendly towards Israel, as a staunchly conservative libertarian he refused to support foreign aid to that country or any other, and he was also a strong opponent of our ongoing military involvement around the world.
One of the very surprising facts that Massie revealed in that conversation was that virtually all Republicans in Congress had accepted the presence of “an AIPAC minder,” someone who would direct their votes on matters considered important to the Zionist State, and he assumed that the same was probably true of the vast majority of Democrats. However, Massie firmly rejected that demand, instead believing that his undivided loyalty should be to the constituents who elected him, the interests of America as a whole, and his own conscience. His political disclosures received very widespread attention and they naturally enraged the Israel Lobby.
During his 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump had campaigned on a promise to release all the government files regarding the activities of Jeffrey Epstein. But once in office he completely reversed his position, apparently under pressure from Israel and its partisans who feared that Epstein’s close ties to Mossad would prove hugely embarrassing. This led Massie to co-sponsor the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which passed Congress and was enacted into law over Trump’s strong opposition.
