Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) lost his primary last week to the Trump-endorsed Ed Gallrein — a loss he attributed in part to “boomers” who were tricked by AI generated videos and a $25 million MAGA campaign against him.
His opposition spent “at least $20 million, maybe $25 million against me,” Massie told “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker on Sunday. “And what they did is they expanded the pool of voters. And there were a lot of misinformed, uninformed voters.
“In fact, my daughter, who lives outside of my congressional district, she heard somebody in the voting booth next to her trying to find my opponent’s name on the ballot because he didn’t even know I wasn’t his congressman.That’s how much they’ve bamboozled the people here in Kentucky.”
AI-generated videos were used to show Massie doing things like “checking into a hotel room with AOC and Ilhan Omar and holding hands with them,” he added.
“It was actually very effective on the boomers,” Massie added. “But here’s the thing, Kristen. That’s only going to work for a little bit longer. The boomers are going to, you know, leave this country to the Gen X, and the Gen Z, and the Gen Y, and the millennials. And those folks are the ones that I won overwhelmingly.”
Watch the full interview below:
“That makes me really hopeful for this country. They don’t get fooled by artificial intelligence, and they check the news. They get news sources like from podcasts and other sources. So they won this race by fooling my voters and expanding the base of people who vote to the uninformed voters. But, look, I got 45% of the vote in spite of this tremendous headwind. That means 45% of the party still believe in the ideals that I believe in and have espoused in Washington, D.C.”
Massie, who has been in Congress since he was elected in 2012, has been a vocal critic of the war in Iran and voted against Trump’s tax legislation in 2025. Per the AP, the race between Massie and Gallrein was the most expensive U.S. House race in history.
