Massie's concession speech after losing the Kentucky primary to Ed Gallrein

Name: Massie's concession speech after losing the Kentucky primary to Ed Gallrein
Uploaded: 2026-05-20
Duration: 28 min 5 s

May 20, 2026 · 28:05 2026-primary kentucky trump aipac israel epstein

Massie's 27-minute concession speech after losing the 2026 Kentucky-4 primary to Trump-backed Ed Gallrein. He frames the loss as the start of a movement: thanks the 50,000 donors who took a $35M+ AIPAC-backed campaign toe-to-toe, salutes the young voters who carried him, walks through the agenda — end the Department of Education, Epstein Files Transparency Act, no more wars, no draft, food and medical freedom, defend the Bill of Rights — and closes with a raw-milk toast to his late wife as the crowd chants '2028'.

Original by PBS NewsHour on YouTube ↗ · Is this yours? Claim credit →

Chapters

Transcript

Click any timestamp to jump to that moment.

Listen, >> I would I would have come out sooner, but I had to call my opponent and
concede. And it took a while to find Ed Galrine in Tel Aviv.
I did get through though. I have I have called and conceded the race. Um, we've been honorable the whole time and we're going to 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 nine months ago and this they didn't even have a candidate and they
decided they want to take me out. Um, I want to 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. I love all of you.
>> All right. Hold on. Hold on.
All right. >> I see. I see how this is going to work. I'm going to 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 place in 2012, and they have done so much. the, you know, we've never had,
contrary to all the BS you've heard, we've never had a single ethics complaint filed against me or my staff in 14 years.
>> I I want to I want to thank the donors. Now, listen, I'd name them all, but there's 50,000 donors, okay?
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 a 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 a week that we got outspent more than two to one 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 a long time one of my longest friends he went
through a a rough spell and I never left 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 a lot of surreal moments in this race and frankly in being in Congress, but being in a 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.
She's she's clapping, too. Um it's a little bit overwhelming for him, but um they are what recharges my batteries
when I come back from Washington DC. 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 a 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 ca she voted this morning and she came out and she said, "Well, that was a 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 a throppple."
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, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA, USA,
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 meant didn't mean to do
this. It started out as an election and it turned into a movement. >> We
passing.
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 I, 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 a 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.
If id known if if id known this speech if id 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 real expensive for
him. Look, um, they used they used a lot of dirty tricks, but we stayed the course. We did not we didn't bend a knee. We
didn't throw a foul ball. We didn't do any of those things. We didn't kneecap anybody. There were We had lots of opportunities to try a lot of stuff like
that and we never did it. We ran a clean race. Hey,
and there's by the way after 18 months of blacking of a 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's almost six, they're talking about this big ballroom they're going to build. And it looks it looks like ro the Roman Empire architecture
from the Roman Empire. I see a few analogies there. And people are just trying to make ends meet. But we were promised that um Miriam Adlesen would
pay for that ballroom. But she >> Hey, they she spent so much money in this
race. They're going to have to reduce the footprint of that thing. U 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 a day." And then 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 wars. >> Look on the bright side.
>> No more. No more wars. No more wars. No more wars.
>> No more wars. >> Guys, knock that off. You're going to 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 a day.
>> All right. We know we don't want a 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. >> Okay, I'll go for that.
I've got a bill to do that. I've also got a bill to end the ed in the Department of Education.
Ran Paul says he wants to pass a law that you need one 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 five minutes to read that bill.
>> By the way, do you know how many pages the Epstein Files Transparency Act was? Two pages.
>> We don't want We 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
a 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. 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 a two-page bill.
>> What else? What else are we for? Look, I for years I've been standing up for the Second Amendment, the first amendment, fourth amendment, the fifth amendment,
the 10th amendment. I just realized the seventh amendment is under attack. It's because I serve on the judiciary committee. The the seventh amendment is
your right to a 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 going to have to fight for, but I've been fighting for it in DC. And we need
to keep fighting for the seventh 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 >> they ran they ran Doge out of town.
>> Elon Musk found out it was easier to land a rocket backwards. It was easier to get a car to drive itself. It was easier to put internet on Antarctica
than it was to cut a $100 of spending in Washington DC. It's a tough problem, but we're not going to give up on that either.
>> Maha. Is anybody here for Maja? >> Does anybody want to eat poison?
>> No. >> Do you want the government telling you what to eat? >> Do you want the government telling you to put a needle in your arm?
>> I don't either. And 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 sixmonth anniversary of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. We've taken out two dozen CEOs, an ambassador,
a prince, a prime minister, a minister of culture.
>> And that was just six months. I got seven months left in Congress.
We Hey, when when did bipartisanship become a dirty word in this country? It never should be. By the way, I'm not
even sure that I'm bipartisan. By means you like both. I might be transpartisan
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 cloak room to go in. So,
>> but look, if I if if you know I I bet you've been through some of you studied political science, by the way, that's not a real science. I'm a 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 a member? What's the difference
between a used car salesman and a member of the whip team? The used car salesman knows when he's lying. >> They go around telling everybody, "Oh,
that good stuff's in the bill. Oh, 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,
um bipartisanship. We need to bring this country together. We It is not. >> There's too much of the uni party in
Washington DC. What we need is a unity party.
2020. >> Look,
>> we've
>> Look, we ran we ran a 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 a 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 uh Ed Galrine. We
weren't running against Donald Trump. We were running for what we believe in.
>> Listen, if you always vote with the president, if the if the legislative branch always votes with the president, we do have a king.
If the legislative branch always vote which votes whichever way the wind is blowing, then we have mob rule.
>> But if the legislative branch and the representatives and the senators that serve with it always follow the constitution, we have a republic.
USA.
>> Why did Why are all the loud ones in the front? I could have heard you in the back.
>> Listen, I want to I want to leave you with this. Um >> Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait. I want to I
want to have a toast. Can Does anybody have their glasses? If you don't, I saw I saw a few glasses. Okay.
This is This is the one scandal. This is the one scandal they never figured out on me.
I get my milk from the Amish cartel.
>> And I and I don't pay for it with Federal Reserve notes. I >> I trade peaches peaches for dairy.
And and what I want to do is I in um this is a toast in honor of my late
wife. I introduced a raw milk bill and a milk lobby came after me viciously. They said
there wouldn't be enough hospitals for all the kids that would be sick and dying >> if we had raw milk. The problem with that is it's already
legal in a bunch of states and I've been drinking it for years. So, uh, my late wife's Google alerts were going off. They were she was getting all this bad
press about me up there in Washington DC and she was worried for me and I've got a pretty thick skin, but she texted me
one of those stories and she said, "OMG, I didn't realize the lactose lobby was so intolerant. >> So, let's have a drink.
I decided before today that we were going to win or lose today and we would win either way, whether
>> because Not again.
>> Uh, you know, when I try to tell my grandson to be quiet tonight, he is not going to listen. He probably be saying, "Massie,
Massie." Here's what I want to leave you with. Um, this we won. We won because we started a movement.
>> We showed people that that if you're under 50, you want to save this country.
>> But but what happened what happened today was God's will. It couldn't happen if God didn't want it
to. >> So, our job, and I'm not going to make any announcements tonight. I'm going to go back, have me a medical margarita.
I'll hang out and party with you all. >> You know, I don't drink recreationally. I have medical margaritas. I even have a
medical margarita card. But >> but what happened what happened today,
>> what happened tonight >> was God's will. >> And we have to figure out what was the purpose of having the biggest fight
ever, >> biggest fight ever? Why did it why did it converge on one of 435 congressional
seats right here in Kentucky? What was God's purpose? What is he showing us tonight? >> We're just getting started. I like that.
>> What? What happens in 2028? >> You want Oh,
you Oh, you want me to run for Congress again? >> I don't know what you're talking about.
All right. Well, you made you made a
compelling argument. You spoke your peace, but I need a medical margarita right now. And we'll and we'll talk about it later.
Thank you and God bless.