Takeaways from Tuesday’s primaries: Massie’s loss leaves no doubt about Trump’s power over the GOP

All right. Listen, I would, I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and concede, and it took *** while to find Ed Galrein in Tel Aviv. I did get the call through though. I have, I have called and conceded the race. Um, we’ve been honorable the whole time and we’re gonna stay that way. You know, welcome to the most expensive congressional primary ever in the 250 year history of this country. It’s not just the most expensive. This thing went on longer than Vietnam. It started 9 months ago and they, they didn’t even have *** candidate and they decided they want to take me out. Uh, I wanna start by thanking the volunteers who have put so much effort into this. Some of you came from all across the country, some of you are homegrown. Well, I love all of you. All right, I see, I see how this is gonna work. I’m gonna have to not quit talking or you’ll start doing it. Um, I want to thank my staff too. Some of my staff have been with me from the very first race in 2012, and they have done so much. They, you know, we’ve never had, contrary to all the BS you’ve heard, we’ve never had *** single ethics complaint filed against me or my staff in 14 years. I, I wanna, I wanna thank the donors. Now listen, I’d name them all, but there’s 50,000 donors, OK? We didn’t, we didn’t lose this race because we didn’t have enough money. You know, it, it is the most expensive race ever. I think when they add it up right now, they can count 35 million. I think when they add it up, it’s going to be *** lot more than that because on our side, we know we spent more than 15 million. And, um, we were able to go toe to toe. There was never *** week that we got outspent more than 2 to 1 in this entire race, um, once it got underway. And that’s, that’s also, it did, it wasn’t just the grassroots donors. We had *** long time, one of my longest friends. He went through, uh, *** rough spell and I never left him. I always supported him and he actually started the super PAC, the one that nobody knows who runs it, um, Cliff Maloney. If you’re around, would you come up here? Maybe I can get him out here to take some credit. Or if he’s in the crowd just pick him up and surf him over here. Uh, Cliff, cliff, Cliff. I see, by the way, I see one of my online influencer heroes, Bobby Sauce over here. There were, there were *** lot of surreal moments in this race and frankly, in being in Congress, but being in *** side by side racing through the woods with Bobby Sauce was definitely on my, it wasn’t even on my bucket list. It was amazing. Um So, and, and getting to that point, I want to thank the influencers who came all this way and produced all the videos and got out the young vote. I want to thank my family. That’s who we have arrayed back here, my grandbabies, all three of them. Uh, she’s She’s clapping too. Um, it’s *** little bit overwhelming for them, but, um, they are what recharges my batteries when I come back from Washington DC and these grandbabies, and that’s what we’re fighting for really, is the next generation and the next generation after that. But I have to especially. Thank my wife, Carolyn. Her parents, her parents knew what they were doing when they named her. Her middle name is Grace. And, um, but she’s *** fighter. I mean, she’s, uh, been tweeted at twice by the chief executive of the most powerful country in the world. She blames me for that because I didn’t invite him to the wedding. But, um, also she, she voted this morning and she came out and she said, well, that was *** wild experience. That was great. I never imagined that would happen. And I said, what happened? She said, I got to vote for my husband and my favorite congressman. I said, that’s practically *** throle. Oh, in all seriousness, um, walking out here and seeing all of you has really energized me, um, and it has all along, but why, why am I hopeful right now? Because if you looked at the cross tab in the polling, and I’m sure if we had exit polling, it would show the same thing. The we have the younger demographic. We, we. USA. You are, you are patriots and you will inherit this country and you will make it better, and I am hopeful because of that. Thank you. We, we accidentally, I think, I, I accidentally, I mean, didn’t mean to do this. It started out as an election and it turned into *** movement. We Listen. Uh. I mean, I think, I think people, if you’re not, if you’re not tired of politics, if you’re not jaded, if you’re not cynical, and so many people are, you know, the people that, uh, you know, want somebody that’ll go along to get along. I’ve never heard of that strategy, but that seems to be what the voters want. That’s what’s been promised to them, but not the young voters. I mean, we stirred up something. There is *** yearning in this country for somebody who will vote for principles over party. You all, you all don’t like bullies and you don’t tolerate them and I love you for it. You also. Yeah, They couldn’t listen. Hey If I’d known, if, if I’d known this speech, if I’d known this speech was going to be this fun to give, I would have come out 15 minutes sooner. Um, look, for 14, for 14 years, those SOBs in Washington tried to buy my vote. They, they couldn’t buy it. Why did this, why did the race get so expensive? Because they decided to buy the seat. And it and it got really expensive for him. Look, um, They used, they used *** lot of dirty tricks, but we stayed the course. We did not, we didn’t bend *** knee. We didn’t throw *** foul ball. We didn’t do any of those things. We didn’t kneecap anybody. There were, we had lots of opportunities to try *** lot of stuff like that, and we never did it. We ran *** clean race. Hey. And there’s By the way, after 18 months of blacking of, of *** blackout of not letting me on Fox, they finally let me on Fox today, 4 hours into the election. Hey. Hey, their, their slop, their slop is selling, so they’ll keep selling it. But, but listen, I got to watch Fox also for the first time in 18 months. And there was the president talking about, by the way, while gas is almost $5 and diesel is almost $6 they’re talking about this big ballroom they’re gonna build and it looks, it looks like the Roman Empire architecture from the Roman Empire. I see *** few analogies there and people are just trying to make ends meet, but we were promised that, um, Miriam Adelson would pay for that ballroom, but she’s. Hey They, she spent so much money in this race, they’re gonna have to reduce the footprint of that thing. Uh, but here’s one thing I saw on Fox. They were saying, oh my goodness, you know, we’re ready for war. There’s about this, we’re about to restart this war. We were supposed to restart this war today, but we can’t restart this war today. The war can’t start today. They said we got to wait *** day. And then it it it like it occurred to me, where was the Secretary of War yesterday? He was here. Listen, Wait, wait, wait, wait. No, look on the, look on the bright side. More wars. No more wars. No more wars. Guys, uh, knock that off. You’re gonna make me feel good about losing. What I wanted to do was give you all credit when they saw the influencers here, they panicked. They sent the Secretary of War here and you stopped the war for *** day. All right, we know we don’t want *** war, and we know why young people are and, you know, middle-aged people are against the next war, because we’d be the ones fighting it. They’re trying to bring back the draft, screw that. We’re not, we’re not going to fight. We’re not going to fight some other country’s wars, are we? No. What else, what else do we stand for? Not we don’t want to send our money overseas. OK, I’ll go for that. I’ve got *** bill to do that. I’ve also got *** bill to end the ed in the Department of Education. Rand Paul says he wants to pass *** law that you need 1 day to read 10 pages of every bill. I asked Rand, what are you going to do about my bill that’s one sentence long to end the Department of Education? That’d be like 5 minutes to read that bill. By the way, do you know how many pages the Epstein Falls Transparency Act was? 2 pages. We don’t want, we, we’re tired of meddling overseas. We can’t afford it. Our empire will collapse if we keep sending our money to other countries. I never picked *** fight with the country that’s tried to take me out here because I’ve never, but I’ve never voted for foreign aid to any country. We got to take care of America first. America first. America first. America first. America first. America first. By the way, there was, you remember that organization that Klaus Schwab started called the World Economic Forum. He said they said you should eat bugs. Do you want to eat bugs? They said you’ll own nothing and be happy about it. You want to do that? Well, guess what happened? Guess what happened to Klaus’s CEO? He was in the Epstein files. He had to resign. We took out, we took out the CEO of the World Economic Forum with *** two-page bill. What else, what else are we for? Look, I, for years I’ve been standing up for the 2nd Amendment, the 1st Amendment, the 4th Amendment, the 5th Amendment, the 10th Amendment. I just realized the 7th Amendment is under attack. It is because I serve on the Judiciary Committee. The 7th Amendment is your right to *** jury trial. They’ve taken it away for vaccines. If you get hurt, you can’t sue for vaccines. They’re trying to take it away for pesticides. They’re trying to take it away for these data centers. No. We’ve been, we’ve been fighting that back. So that’s part of, that’s an amendment that frankly, I didn’t think I was gonna have to fight for, but I’ve been fighting for it in DC and we need to keep fighting for the 7th Amendment too. They want these corporations want get out of court free cards. We’re not going to give them one. What else is part of our coalition? Cutting Doge, cutting spending. They ran, they ran Doge out of town. Elon Musk found out it was easier to land *** rocket backwards. It was easier to get *** car to drive itself. It was easier to put internet on Antarctica. Than it was to cut $100 of spending in Washington DC. It’s *** tough problem, but we’re not going to give up on that either. Maha, is anybody here for Maha? Does anybody want to eat poison? Do you want the government telling you what to eat? Do you want the government telling you to put *** needle in your arm? I don’t either. That’s why I’ve been fighting all of that stuff. We need food freedom, we need medical freedom, we need all of those freedoms. And we need, we need basic decency. We need basic decency. That’s what the Epstein Files Transparency Act was all about. By the way, today is the 6 month anniversary of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. We’ve taken out 2 dozen CEOs, an ambassador. *** prince. *** prime minister. *** minister of culture. And that was just 6 months. I got 7 months left in Congress. Wait, hey, when, when did bipartisanship become *** dirty word in this country? It never should be, by the way. I’m not even sure that I’m bipartisan. Bi means you like both. I might be trans partisan. Because I can’t identify with either some days. That’s the great thing about the polls being closed. I can’t run an ad where I claim to be trans. Transpartisan, thank you very much. I don’t know which cloakroom to go in. So But look, if I, if, if you know, I, I bet you’ve been through some of you to studied political science. By the way, that’s not *** real science. I’m *** political science denier. If you’re already halfway through that degree, double major in theater and call it political theater. Then you can serve on the oversight committee, the judiciary Committee. You can be on the whip team. What’s *** member, what’s the difference between *** used car salesman and *** member of the whip team? The used car salesman knows when he’s lying. They go around telling everybody all that good stuff’s in the bill, all that bad stuff’s not in the bill. I don’t blame them. They haven’t read the bill they’re not lying. They don’t know they’re lying anyways, uh, bipartisanship, we need to bring this country together we, it is not. There’s too much of the Unity Party in Washington DC. What we need is *** unity party. Look, We’ve Look, we ran, we ran *** race that you can be proud of. You have to apologize to nobody tomorrow for anything you did, and we kept smiling the whole time. When I was called *** moron at the prayer breakfast, I said, I’m glad I’m in his prayers. Just that would be my advice to you all. Don’t dig in. Don’t get mad. Don’t even try to get even. Just stay on your course, get our stuff done, get the things you care about done. We weren’t really running against Ed Galriin. We weren’t running against Donald Trump. We were running for what we believe in.