Donald Trump has called on the MAGA base in Kentucky to oust GOP Representative Thomas Massie from his seat in the 2026 midterms.
“Third Rate Congressman Thomas Massie, a Weak and Pathetic RINO from the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky, a place I love, and won big SIX TIMES, must be thrown out of office, ASAP!” the president raged on Truth Social Friday night.
Massie has been a near-constant thorn in the side of the MAGA administration since Trump assumed office for the second time in January. The Kentucky representative has often stood as a lone Republican voice of dissent against the party’s budget proposals including, most crucially, the president’s “Big Beautiful Bill” act earlier in July.
More recently, however, Massie has also emerged alongside fellow GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene as vocal House critics of the MAGA administration’s handling of developments in the sex trafficking case of late disgraced financier, Jeffrey Epstein.
In his Friday night diatribe, Trump claimed Massie is currently polling at around 9% “because the Great People of Kentucky are wise to him—He only votes against the Republican Party, making life very easy for the Radical Left.”
While it was not immediately clear where exactly the president got his 9% figure from, a June small-sample poll of likely Republican primary voters by Kaplan Strategies found only 23% of voters viewed him favorably, with support dropping to 14% in a hypothetical match against a Trump-endorsed challenger.
The president appears to have seized on those weaknesses. In his Truth Social post Trump put his support behind Captain Ed Gallrein, who ran an unsuccessful race for the Kentucky state Senate last year, as a prospective opponent to Massie in next year’s primary. He attached a photo of himself grinning with the former Navy SEAL in the Oval Office.
“Unlike ‘lightweight’ Massie, a totally ineffective LOSER who has failed us so badly, CAPTAIN ED GALLREIN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN,” Trump wrote. “Should he decide to challenge Massie, Captain Ed Gallrein has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, ED, RUN – MAGA!”
If it’s a fight Trump wants, Massie appears unlikely to take the challenge lying down. His team reported a strong fundraising streak of more than $1.7 million this summer amid tours of his constituency with support from his fellow GOP critic of Trump in Kentucky, Senator Rand Paul.
The Oval Office heat hasn’t deterred Massie from his wider pursuit of transparency over the Epstein scandal. He reached out across the aisle to heap further pressure on the Trump administration’s over its reluctance to release new documents on the case.
Trump has long courted far-right conspiracy theorists who believe Epstein and his co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell’s crimes came as part of their role in an international pedophilic cabal, supposedly comprised of high-powered figures across the U.S. and around the world.
That courtship—which came despite Trump’s long-standing friendship with Epstein, who he once described as a “terrific guy” who likes women “on the younger side”—was upended in July after the Justice Department and FBI determined Epstein’s 2019 death in police custody was a suicide, and that he had not kept a long-rumored client list of uber-wealthy accomplices.
The president has since poured further fuel on the fire by refusing to rule out a pardon for Maxwell, who’s currently serving a 20-year sentence on sex trafficking charges. Critics have slammed this move as a quid pro quo for Maxwell’s comments seemingly exonerating Trump during a sit-down earlier this year with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the president’s former criminal defense lawyer.
Massie has now co-authored what’s known as a “discharge petition” with his Democratic counterpart, Congressman Ro Khanna, to bypass GOP leadership and force a House vote on demanding the Justice Department release further investigative documents on the case. Trump’s name is widely reported to be featured.
The Republican Representative rubbed further salt in the wound only last week, publicly praising his alma mater, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for rejecting a White House funding offer tied to the implementation of several right-wing policies laid out by the MAGA Department of Education.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment on this story.
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