Massie Falls Victim to a Cult That Should Hail Him as a Hero

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When future historians examine this era of American politics, one of their questions will be whether Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and his administration more closely resembled a cult or a criminal enterprise. This week, we got a reminder that it is both.

Let’s first look at the cult element.

On Tuesday, the president got his revenge on Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY). While the two of them have clashed on other issues, which we will examine in a moment, what made the lawmaker Trump’s No. 1 target is that he was the driving force behind the legislation that mandated the release of the Epstein files.

While the Department of Justice has defied the law by withholding many documents and redacting others, this issue has been a massive headache for the president. A majority of Americans believe that he was involved in Epstein’s sordid crimes and that the DOJ is now covering this up.

And, to be fair, it’s hardly surprising that the man who sent this conspiratorial birthday card to the notorious sex offender and is mentioned throughout the documents would like to keep them out of public view.

However, that should not be true for his core supporters.

Getting to the bottom of a massive sex trafficking ring involving the rich and powerful, who are getting away with the most disgusting crimes because of their wealth and influence, should be squarely in the MAGA wheelhouse  

At least it was when Hillary Clinton supposedly drank the blood of children in the basement of a pizza restaurant. Clearly, the appetite of the president’s backers to punish wrong-doers has waned in light of Trump’s downright bizarre and suspicious behavior when it comes to his former pal.

Still, in theory, if MAGA weren’t a cult, the movement’s adherents should have sided with Massie on this one.

And not only when it comes to taking on that cabal of pedophiles and the subsequent cover-up.

On the other occasions when Massie defied Trump, he usually took the position that is more “America First,” for example by voting against the “Big, Beautiful Bill” because it will add trillions of dollars to the debt or by opposing another foreign war in the Middle East.

Those are the issues that would supposedly be core tenets of the MAGA catechism, if it weren’t a cult. But it is.

Last year, Trump proclaimed ahistorically that, since he is the one who came up with “America First,” he gets to decide what it means.

And on Tuesday, Kentucky Republicans proved him right.

Of course, to the president, “America First” really means “Trump First.”

Coincidentally, putting the interests of its leader above all else is one of the hallmarks of any cult. Others include isolating members from the outside world, aka “reality,” which Fox News and social media take care of for the MAGA movement; no tolerance for critical inquiry; no financial disclosure; absolute authoritarianism; belief in conspiracies and fear of the outside world; and penalizing members who dare to make it out.

In many cases, the people who manage to leave or are cast out then become vocal critics, just as happened with former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who openly worried this week that Trump would cancel the 2028 election to stay in power.

To his credit, even though he epitomizes many of the things that MAGA purports to stand for, Massie was never part of the cult, and he can leave Congress with his head held high for refusing to betray his beliefs.

The same cannot be said for Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), another cult casualty.

Last week, the two-term senator couldn’t even advance to a runoff to keep his job after he committed the unforgivable offense of voting to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial five years ago.

Cassidy is a perfect example of one of the two main groups of Republicans you can find in Washington these days. The first, which is growing all the time, consists of the true believers. These are the far-right lawmakers who will do anything for Trump. Most of them came to Congress in the past decade, and many of them replaced Republicans who either quit or were purged.

The second group, to which the Louisiana senator belongs, is composed of those lawmakers who stuck around and traded their spines for a MAGA membership card.

It should be noted that not everybody in this category is cut from exactly the same cloth. Some of them, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio or Vice President JD Vance, are ambitious opportunists who view Trump as their ticket to power. Others either want job security or are simply afraid.

And this is where the criminal enterprise component of the president’s operation comes into play.

Trump runs the GOP (and the US government, for that matter) like a crime syndicate. If you please the Don, you get richly rewarded. Literally!

This week, in perhaps the most corrupt act of his life, which is a really high bar, the president set up a slush fund for supporters of his who ran afoul of the law, like the hundreds of MAGA adherents who stormed Congress on his behalf. By not only pardoning them but also trying to amply reward them for their participation in his insurrection, Trump is sending a message to others in the movement: If you fight for me, you don’t have to fear consequences; you might even get rich.

However, if you displease the Don, no matter how loyal you used to be, you risk losing your job and may get death threats from the faithful — just ask former Vice President Mike Pence.

The effect of the president’s coercive tactics can be seen most plainly when he loses his leverage over lawmakers who fall into the second category… like Cassidy.

As soon as he was unshackled from the burden of having to please the leader to retain his job, he completely changed his behavior from being subservient to becoming disobedient.

In the days following his primary loss, the senator voted in favor of a war powers resolution curbing Trump’s authority in the Iran war, objected to the creation of the slush fund, said he would not support giving the president $1 billion for his ballroom project, and blasted him in his concession speech.

This is a pattern we have seen repeatedly from GOP lawmakers who are not going to run for reelection, which reflects almost as poorly on them as it does on the president.

Yet, while their acquiescence isn’t admirable, we don’t have firsthand knowledge of what it’s like to live under the thumb of a crime boss/cult leader, so we don’t want to be overly critical of them.

After all, Trump is demonstrating every day that he — with the help of devotees throughout the government and the countless foot soldiers in the MAGA movement who are willing to commit crimes on his behalf — will go to extraordinary lengths to punish those who are not infallibly loyal to him.

And that sets Massie apart. While we may not agree with many of his views, he deserves praise for always standing up for them — even in the face of extreme pressure. Where others bent and broke, he never yielded.

Unless there are going to be lots of Epstein-related prosecutions as a result of his work, it is unlikely that he will be more than an afterthought in those history books of the future. But that doesn’t mean that he hasn’t earned our admiration now.