By
Ed Kilgore,
political columnist for Intelligencer since 2015
Trouble magnet Andy Ogles.
Nothing in politics, not even Donald Trump’s grip on the Republican Party, is eternally unshakable. The 47th president has had some embarrassing high-profile setbacks in gubernatorial primaries earlier this year, including losses by his endorsed candidates in Iowa, Georgia, and South Carolina. Now he’s suffered his first 2026 loss in a congressional primary: Hard-core MAGA ultra and flamboyant Islamophobe Andy Ogles lost to former state agriculture commissioner Charlie Hatcher in Tennessee last night. As in the earlier contests lost by Team Trump, the winner naturally asserts he will be a stronger supporter of the Boss than the loser he dispatched. But it does add up to a growing tendency of MAGA-esque Republicans to disregard Trump’s actual preferences.
