Rep. Thomas Massie isn’t losing sleep over the vitriol Donald Trump keeps throwing his way, and even appears to relish the attention the president pays him.
Speaking to Politico, the libertarian Kentucky Republican, who twice voted against Trump’s “Big, Beautiful” spending bill in the House and condemned the president’s decision to launch airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, noted that Trump has come for him before.
“I am consequential here in Washington, D.C. In between launching B-2 bombers to the other side of the planet, the president spends some portion of his attention worried about what I’m going to do next,” Massie said.
“I don’t really think he has a vendetta against me,” he added. “He’s trying to keep the other people in lockstep with him by attacking me. He knows I can weather it.”
Trump has reignited his off-and-on feud with Massie over the congressman’s opposition to Trump’s spending bills and foreign policies, and is taking steps to try to have him removed from office.
“Massie is weak, ineffective, and votes ‘NO’ on virtually everything put before him (Rand Paul, Jr.), no matter how good something may be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on June 22. “MAGA should drop this pathetic LOSER, Tom Massie, like the plague!”
The president’s team has launched a new super PAC that’s airing attack ads in Kentucky targeting the congressman and urging voters to “fire Thomas Massie.” Trump is also eyeing Kentucky state Sen. Aaron Reed as a possible challenger to Massie in the GOP primary ahead of his re-election bid in the 4th Congressional District next year.
This isn’t the first time Trump has openly called for Massie—a frequent lone Republican dissenter in House votes—to be kicked out of office. In a March 2020 post on X, Trump branded Massie a “third-rate grandstander” who should be thrown out of the Republican Party for opposing a $2 trillion COVID-19 relief package.
Massie went on to win the 2020 GOP primary easily with 81 percent of the vote, and won that year’s general election with 67 percent.
One person who has pledged to back Massie’s re-election bid financially is tech billionaire Elon Musk, who had a spectacular falling out with Trump in part because of a disagreement about the “Big, Beautiful” spending bill.
When asked by Politico whether Musk is planning to pump money into his campaign, Massie replied knowingly: “I haven’t heard that he is, but I can tell you there will be a super PAC that will be helping me.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Beast.
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