Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) told Tucker Carlson that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee has designated representatives assigned to each Republican member of Congress to ensure the lawmakers vote for bills Israel supports.
Appearing on Friday’s edition of The Tucker Carlson Show, Massie explained some of AIPAC’s tactics to sway lawmakers. The congressman told Carlson that he banned AIPAC from his office after the group lobbied against his reelection. Massie said the bad blood began when he refused the group’s request to write a white paper on Israel when he first ran for Congress.
“I have Republicans, you come to me on the floor and say, ‘I wish I could vote with you today. Yours is the right vote, but I would just take too much flak back home,’” Massie stated.
And I have Republicans who come to me and say, ‘That’s wrong, what a PAC is doing to you. Let me talk to my AIPAC person.’ By the way, everybody but me has an AIPAC person.
“What does that mean—an AIPAC person?” Carlson asked, prompting this exchange:
M: It’s like your babysitter. Your AIPAC babysitter who is always talking to you for AIPAC. They’re probably a constituent in your district, but they are, you know, firmly embedded in AIPAC.
C: And every member has something like this.
M: Every Re—I don’t know how it works on the Democrats’ side. But that’s how it works on the Republican side. And when they come to D.C., you go have lunch with them. And they’ve got your cell number and you have conversations with them. So I’ve had like—
C: That’s absolutely crazy.
M: I’ve had four members of Congress say, “I’ll talk to my AIPAC person.” And like that’s clearly what we call them, my AIPAC guy. I’ll talk to my AIPAC guy and see if I can get them to, you know, dial those ads back.
C: Why have I never heard this before?
M: It doesn’t benefit anybody. Why would they want to tell their constituents that they’ve basically got a buddy system with somebody who’s representing a foreign country? It doesn’t benefit the congressman for people to know that. So they’re not going to tell you that.
Carlson followed up by asking if any other countries have similar “guys” for whipping lawmakers.
“They pay for trips for congressmen and their spouses to go to Israel,” He continued.
I’m not the only Republican who hasn’t taken the AIPAC trip to Israel, but I’m probably one of a dozen that hasn’t taken that trip and the other ones just haven’t got around to it.
Though it has long been a powerful lobbying group, AIPAC only began raising money for individual candidates in 2021. Since that time, it has run negative ads against lawmakers it views as hostile to Israel or insufficiently supportive of the country. The group has for example already spent nearly $2 million trying to primary Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who called the organization “racist” and claimed,
Their donors are MAGA.