Trump's political hitman vows in-house retribution purge is over — now there's new target

President Donald Trump has finished purging his Republican enemies — and his top political aide says it's time to go to war with Democrats.

James Blair, the man who helped orchestrate Trump's 2024 comeback and is now running his 2026 operation, told the Washington Examiner this week that the GOP's bloody primary season is effectively done.

"We've basically moved on to general elections now," Blair said.

The declaration comes days after Trump-backed Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL, defeated Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) in the most expensive House primary on record — more than $32 million in ad spending. Blair called it the "main event" of the president's revenge tour.

The tour was brutal. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) — who voted to convict Trump after January 6 — was ousted in Louisiana's Senate primary. Five of seven Indiana state senators who bucked Trump's redistricting push lost their primaries. And hours before Massie fell Tuesday night, Trump endorsed Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate runoff, all but ending incumbent Sen. John Cornyn's (R-TX) political career.

And this week, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), an outspoken critic who spearheaded demands for a Jeffrey Epstein inquiry, lost his primary to a Trump-backed rival.

Now, Blair says, it's Democrats' turn.

Trump's team is sitting on a massive financial advantage heading into the fall. Vice President JD Vance, serving as the RNC's finance chairman, has helped build a war chest of roughly $125 million in cash on hand. The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, is still carrying debts from Kamala Harris's failed 2024 presidential campaign.

But Trump's team faces serious headwinds. The president's job approval sits roughly 16 to 19 points underwater heading into the summer, with independents leading the slide. Some Republicans are already grumbling that Trump is more focused on remodeling the White House than on affordability, the top issue for voters.

Trump's own team admits the math could shift fast. The Examiner reports that "sticky inflation and the war in Iran" could erode the GOP's projected 214 leaning-Republican House seats. And one former senior White House official conceded the "blame Biden" playbook has run its course.

"S— only works to a point, and we're way over the horizon there," the official said. "When you're waging a war with another country, which nobody asked for, and the last guy had nothing to do with, you can't just blame it all on 'Sleepy Joe' anymore. Voters won't buy it."

Trump's primary purges may have created their own problem, too. Paxton, who has faced years of corruption allegations, is widely viewed as a weaker general-election candidate than Cornyn — potentially putting a previously safe Texas Senate seat in play against Democrat James Talarico.

Trump shrugged off the criticism on Wednesday.

"I know how to win," he told reporters. "I think I've proven that, haven't I?"

His party is about to find out if that's still enough.