Trump goes after GOP foes in Louisiana, Kentucky primaries
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2026
⏱️ 22 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and Kentucky Public Radio reporter Sylvia Goodman.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's Miles. |
| 0:02.2 | A quick word before we get started today. |
| 0:04.1 | If the NPR Politics Podcast is part of your daily ritual, make it official on the NPR app. |
| 0:09.1 | You'll hear about every episode the moment we have it ready. |
| 0:11.8 | Just turn on notifications and we'll handle the rest. |
| 0:14.2 | See you there. |
| 0:15.0 | Download the NPR app today. |
| 0:17.0 | Okay, here's the show. |
| 0:21.5 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. |
| 0:26.2 | And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. |
| 0:28.9 | And Sylvia Goodman of Kentucky Public Radio is also here with us. Hi, Sylvia. Welcome to the podcast. |
| 0:33.6 | So happy to be here. So happy to have you. And today on the show, President Trump's foes, real or perceived, are taking a beating this primary season. Dominica, we saw this again over the weekend in Louisiana with incumbent Republican Senator Bill Cassidy. This is a person who voted to impeach Donald Trump in 2021 and not coincidentally finished third in his primary on Saturday. |
| 0:56.9 | What did you make at those results? |
| 0:58.4 | Bill Cassidy has been in so much of kind of being an antagonist to what some of MAGA and Maha, |
| 1:06.6 | by the way, the Make America Healthy Again movement, has been running, whether it's grilling Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump's pick to be health secretary, or tanking his surgeon general pick, Casey Means. You know, it's really been somebody who's so high profile with Cassidy that it's really pretty |
| 1:28.3 | stunning to see that he's actually gone down and that he wound up finishing third, didn't |
| 1:34.4 | even make the runoff. He only got 24% of the vote. Congresswoman Julia Lettlau, who was Trump's |
| 1:40.8 | endorsed pick over Cassidy, finished first with 44%. State Treasurer John Fleming, |
| 1:48.5 | who MAGA didn't really want in the race, the Trump MAGA White House anyway, he stuck with it. |
| 1:54.8 | He got about 28%. Now he's heading to a runoff with Lettlaub. And that means only two senators who |
| 2:00.6 | voted for Trump's impeachment back in |
| 2:03.1 | 2021 are still going to be in Congress. And that's if, you know, Senator Susan Collins |
... |
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