The worst primary in America just ended

Dan Bilzerian attends Ignite's Angels and Devils Pre-Valentine's Day Party on February 13, 2019, in Bel Air, California. | Randall Michaelson/Getty Images for Ignite Rep.

Randy Fine, the Republican running for reelection in Florida’s Sixth Congressional District, has unfavorably compared Muslims to dogs and suggested Israel should starve Gazans .

“We need more Islamophobia, not less,” he wrote in one tweet .

“Palestinian is a synonym for evil,” he wrote in another .

You might think that such a person would obviously be the most repugnant candidate in tonight’s FL-6 primary.

But then there’s Dan Bilzerian, the right-wing influencer who challenged him.

Bilzerian is an open antisemite and Holocaust denier with millions of social media followers who has said that “most of the problems today are caused by Jewish supremacy.” He has called the mastermind of October 7 a “ hero ” and fantasized about personally killing Israelis .

During the campaign, he regularly called Fine a “ fat Jew ” and released an AI-generated music video on X that muses about a second Holocaust : “Jewish supremacist, Satan’s creepy little minions / should we revisit that Austrian painter’s opinions?” Lest the reference be too subtle, the line is overlaid over a graphic of Adolf Hitler wearing a painter’s apron.

Fine won easily, but Bilzerian appeared poised to finish with about 19 percent of the vote with over 90 percent of ballots counted, making him the top vote-getter out of four Republicans challenging the incumbent.

This should all be a giant flashing warning sign for the GOP’s post-Trump future.

As on the Democratic side, divides over Gaza and October 7 have created a schism inside the GOP.

But the right has rejected the very idea of gatekeeping against bigotry as either “woke” or needlessly divisive.

For all his anti-Muslim statements, Fine is a Republican in good standing, with Trump’s “complete and total” endorsement to prove it.

And he and others with similarly vicious views have turned the right’s debate over the Middle East into an increasingly nasty fight over American Muslims and Jews themselves.