Two-term Senator Bill Cassidy from Louisiana fell in that state’s primary on Saturday. For an incumbent senator, he finished third and failed to advance to a runoff. He came up short despite millions in support from his Senate colleagues and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The winner, Rep. Julia Letlow, carried Trump’s endorsement.
The first question is: why did President Trump, as the leader of the GOP, endorse someone other than the NRSC’s candidate? In a deep-red state that Trump has never lost, it would make sense for Cassidy’s Senate colleagues to ask him to retire and defer to the president’s political instincts.
In the weeks of coverage that followed, no reporter pressed Trump, Cassidy, or Senate Majority Leader John Thune on why the president had broken with his own party’s committee. Instead, we saw the media reveling in the possibility that Senator Cassidy would somehow pull it off and deliver a blow to President Trump. Eleven years after Trump entered the race in 2015, the liberal media still hopes for a GOP candidate to defeat one of his endorsements at the polls.
Cassidy is the latest example, not the first. Members of the first Trump administration who left or were fired became media darlings long before him — former FBI Director James Comey, former National Security Advisor John Bolton. Both still appear regularly on primetime television.
Two Trump administration officials of presidential caliber, both of whom served a full four-year term, have been largely absent from the media circuit since 2017. Former Texas Governor Rick Perry ran the Department of Energy and helped America become a net energy exporter in 2019, the first time in 67 years. Perry is rarely seen on television today, though his voice would be valuable as energy prices roil the world economy.
Dr. Ben Carson is also absent from television. Housing is a major issue on voters’ minds, and Carson is a respected figure in both health and housing. But he suffers from a disqualifying condition in the eyes of the liberal media: loyalty to Trump.
We tell our children to learn from their mistakes, but the media never does. It openly embraced former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former Vice President Mike Pence, former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, and former UN Ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. Each was an anti-Trump Republican masquerading as a principled activist, and each is now a political footnote.
The media has failed to appreciate why President Trump is so intensely popular with his GOP base. A majority of them genuinely believe that Trump was denied a win in 2020. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a key figure in the 2020 election that went to Biden, ran for governor this Tuesday as a principled conservative, with the word “Conservative” splashed behind him at every public appearance. He came in a distant third and failed to make the runoff. Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, the Trump-endorsed candidate, finished first and heads to a June runoff.
The Democratic Party ignored the warnings of former Minnesota Congressman Dean Phillips, who argued that Biden was unelectable and showing his age. Phillips played the Liz Cheney role within his own party, a dissenter the media should have embraced on principle. But the media shut him out and let the nomination process proceed so Biden could win again in 2024. If dissenting voices within the party matter, why wasn’t Phillips celebrated?
Since Trump returned to office, other annoyances have surfaced in the GOP. Marjorie Taylor Greene has positioned herself against Trump and become a media favorite for it. A year from now, few will remember her name.
Kentucky Congressman Thomas Massie was another such figure, draped in libertarian principle. The Libertarian Party itself has never won a single congressional seat or carried a state in a presidential election. Massie lost by ten points on Tuesday to Trump-endorsed Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL, in the most expensive U.S. House primary on record at $32 million. The defeat likely ends a career that began in 2012.
Meanwhile, the media grudgingly acknowledged that Trump retains complete control over the GOP, as though that were a surprise. Out in the heartland, the average GOP voter never doubted it.
U.S. Charges Former Cuban President Raúl Castro With Murder
U.S. murder charges against former Cuban President Raúl Castro, brother of revolutionary leader Fidel Castro, mark a major escalation in Washington’s pressure campaign against Cuba’s communist government.
The indictment accuses Castro and several former Cuban military officials of involvement in the 1996 shootdown of two civilian aircraft operated by the Miami-based exile group Brothers to the Rescue, which killed four people.
Criminal charges against a former foreign head of state are highly unusual and reflect the increasingly aggressive approach the Trump administration has taken toward Latin America.
The tougher U.S. stance has become closely associated with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants and a potential Republican presidential contender in 2028. Rubio has played a leading role in shaping the administration’s hardline policy toward Cuba and other leftist governments in the region.
Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. has tightened sanctions on Cuba and threatened penalties against countries supplying the island with fuel.
At the same time the indictment was announced, U.S. Southern Command confirmed that the USS Nimitz had entered the Caribbean, a deployment likely to increase tensions between Washington and Havana.
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