With razor-thin majorities in Congress, the US president needs the votes of the very people whose careers he has destroyed

As Abba’s Dancing Queen played, Donald Trump walked across a lawn featuring cornhole, oversized Connect Four, a ferris wheel and a food tent offering short ribs, mac and cheese and apple pie. Members of Congress and their families had come for the annual White House picnic. But not every member of Congress.

Missing the fun was Thomas Massie, a longtime thorn in the US president’s side. Massie was at home in Kentucky, suffering a primary election defeat that made him the latest victim of Trump’s revenge tour. “We won the Massie thing,” the president told guests at the picnic on Tuesday evening. “He was a bad guy. He deserves to lose.”

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