President Donald Trump remains a force to be reckoned with in Republican primaries, CNN’s data guru warned.
Harry Enten, the network’s chief data analyst, said the Louisiana and Kentucky primaries and polling for the heated Texas match-up are proof of Republican voters’ continued loyalty to the president.
“Trump is the general of the Republican Party and Republican primary voters are, in fact, his soldiers,” he said Thursday after GOP candidates who crossed Trump suffered scathing losses in their respective primaries.
In Louisiana, Sen. Bill Cassidy’s re-election bid got shot down by Republican voters who fell in line behind Julia Letlow, the Trump-endorsed candidate. The blowback to Cassidy’s defiance of Trump, whom he voted to impeach after the Jan. 6, 2021 riot, was one of the worst primary showings since World War II.
Enten said Cassidy only secured 25 percent of the vote, marking “the worst ever primary performance” for an incumbent, non-appointed senator since 1946.
“My goodness gracious. This is all because they went against Donald John Trump,” Enten exclaimed.
In Kentucky, top Trump foe Rep. Thomas Massie also bit the dust after Trump forcefully campaigned in favor of his opponent, Ed Gallrein. Trump had waged a monthslong campaign against Massie over the Republican firebrand’s opposition to his “big, beautiful” megabill and Iran war, as well as the bipartisan effort to force the release of the Epstein files.
Enten pointed out that Massie got at least 75 percent of the vote in the 2024 and 2022 polls. This year, however, that figure fell to just 45 percent.
“The big difference was that Donald Trump came in, campaigned very vigorously against Thomas Massie,” he said. “And when you go against President Trump, as I like to say, quoting the great film Goodburger, ‘You go in the grinder.’“
“That’s exactly what happened to Thomas Massie, because Donald Trump is just a figure you don’t want to mess with in Republican primaries,” he added.
In Texas, where Trump has endorsed scandal-plagued Attorney General Ken Paxton over incumbent Sen. John Cornyn, 55 percent of Republican voters said they would be more likely to vote for the candidate handpicked by the president.
“The bottom line is this, what Donald Trump wants, he almost always gets in Republican primaries,” Enten said. “It’s no wonder the president’s so confident.”
