Hoosier hoopla

The Playbook Podcast

POLITICO

News, Daily News, Government, Politics

3.9 • 699 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2026

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

President Donald Trump's retribution campaign is landing in Indiana. After a raft of Republican state lawmakers spurned the White House's redistricting push in the Hoosier State, the president and his allies vowed to target rebels with aggressive primary efforts to oust them from their seats. That promise is now getting backed up by a significant splash of cash for a suite of state-level races. Playbook's Adam Wren and White House reporter Megan Messerly discuss the unprecedented effort from MAGA world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today on the Playbook podcast, Donald Trump's retribution campaign comes to Indiana.
0:11.5	Vice President J.D. Vance is headed to North Carolina. And the DHS shutdown stretches on to a month with no end in sight.
0:20.4	Hello, I'm Adam Wren. And I'm Megan Messerly. It's Friday,
0:24.1	March 13th. Adam, retribution, this is the topic that has been on my mind all week. President
0:32.6	Trump was in Kentucky this week in Representative Thomas Massey's district, obviously Long a Thorne
0:40.0	and the president's side, and the president is now supporting Massey's Republican primary
0:45.5	opponent, former Navy SEAL at Gowleran. This rally was just, I just keep thinking about it
0:51.8	in my mind out of because to me it was like just a ready
0:55.0	made campaign ad. If folks have not already cut these into ads, I'm sure they will quickly be
0:59.9	cut into ads. I mean, Trump was just laying into Thomas Massey and heaping praise on Galrain.
1:07.6	And of course, this is just the latest example of what the president does to folks
1:12.7	who stand up to him and dare to go against his agenda. And you have some fresh reporting out
1:18.3	of Indiana of yet another example of this. Tell me more about what you're learning.
1:23.3	Yeah, Megan, I was surprised President Donald Trump didn't veer up into the Hoosier stages from down south in Kentucky.
1:30.3	He was across the border in Ohio as well.
1:32.7	But Trump allies, I'm told, and we report this morning in the newsletter, are prepared to spend more than $5 million on Indiana's May primaries in at least six or seven state Senate districts where Republican senators
1:47.0	voted against his redistricting plan just a few months ago in December. And this is very much a retribution
1:53.1	campaign. The bulk of this, we're told, is going to be spent by the Hoosier Leadership for
1:58.8	America, political nonprofit, which is led by Senator Jim Banks
2:03.6	of Indiana. But more importantly, Megan, this group is led by Andrew Serabian, a political
2:09.6	advisor to Vice President J.D. Vance, who of course traveled to the Hoosier State not once
2:15.2	but twice last fall to persuade holdout lawmakers that
	...

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