Heading into 2026, Thomas Massie was already the Republican House member whom President Trump most loved to hate.
With his libertarian leanings and a bit of a mulish streak, the Kentucky conservative repeatedly crossed Mr. Trump last year — opposing his domestic policy bill, criticizing his strikes on Iran, forcing the release of the Epstein files and generally refusing to lick the presidential boots. Many months ago, the president committed to ridding himself of Mr. Massie in the coming midterms. Members of his political machine formed an anti-Massie super PAC, ran an early round of attack ads, recruited a primary challenger more to the president’s liking and gleefully trashed the seven-term congressman at every turn.
So did Mr. Massie ease up as he entered a re-election year, facing a nasty fight fueled by an irate president? Not exactly. First, he came out hard against the administration’s Jan. 3 military exploit in Venezuela that captured its president, Nicolás Maduro. A staunch anti-interventionist, Mr. Massie is appalled by what he considers an illegal and unconstitutional bout of adventurism. “Wake up MAGA,” he raged on X. “This is not what we voted for.”
His criticism sparked an online brawl with Mr. Trump, joined by Mr. Massie’s Trump-endorsed primary challenger, Ed Gallrein. The president went heavy on the name-calling — “loser,” “weak,” “lightweight” “RINO” — and urged “all MAGA warriors” to ditch Mr. Massie and “rally behind” Mr. Gallrein. It was enough to make a more skittish Republican cower under the covers.
What did Mr. Massie do for a follow-up? On Thursday, he and his Democratic colleague Ro Khanna ratcheted up their push for the files on Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier and sex offender, asking a federal judge to appoint a special master to oversee the files’ release. The Department of Justice, they charged, “cannot be trusted with making mandatory disclosures.”
At some point, you start to wonder if maybe the congressman has a political death wish — if, after so much beefing with Mr. Trump, he is worn out and looking to exit the House in a blaze of defiance. Which is precisely what I asked him when we spoke Friday about his growing friction with the president, and its potential fallout.
Mr. Massie laughed at my question, then offered his very serious take on the election. “My race will be a referendum on whether you can be in the Republican Party in Washington, D.C., and have a thought that diverges from the president’s,” he said. The answer to this question should concern everyone, he maintains. “We have three branches of government, and if the legislative branch becomes a rubber stamp for the president, then we do have a king.”
Whatever your take on Kentucky politics — if you even have one — Mr. Massie’s point should resonate. Rarely has America’s system of checks and balances felt more crucial, or more precarious, with Mr. Trump radiating increasingly imperialist vibes (pity poor Greenland!) and directly claiming global powers constrained only by his “own morality.”
Framing your candidacy as a bulwark against unchecked presidential power is not an obvious strategy for a House member representing a deep-red district in a state Mr. Trump won by 30 points in 2024. But Mr. Massie sees it in keeping with his longstanding “brand” and record as a lawmaker who thinks for himself and fights for his principles. He is leaning into the pitch that voters “have a choice between a rubber stamp for the president or somebody who exercises their own judgment to cast the best vote for 750,000 people in Kentucky.”
Mr. Massie’s chief opponent, Mr. Gallrein, is running on two things: his military background (he is a former Navy SEALs member who served for three decades) and, mostly, the fact that Mr. Trump supports him. Mr. Gallrein, who now runs his family’s farm, does not have a deep political background or a clear political profile. He ran unsuccessfully for the State Senate in 2024. He has not yet identified himself with any ideological or policy details. His candidacy is founded explicitly, if not solely, on the notion that he is the president’s man.
The Gallrein camp contends that Mr. Massie’s maverick shtick has gone too far. They say the congressman has turned into a full-on roadblock, impeding Mr. Trump’s agenda out of ego more than principle.
Mr. Massie’s criticism of the Venezuela operation slots neatly into this indictment. Garden-variety voters don’t worry much about “the ins and outs” of foreign policy moves, someone close to the Gallrein campaign told me. “It’s simpler. The president did something badass. We went in there and took the guy out.” Mr. Massie’s complaints about things like congressional authority are too academic, as Team Gallrein sees it, and they expect voters to focus on the fact that, yet again, the congressman positioned himself against the president.
Neither campaign thinks Venezuela, per se, will be a serious factor in the May 19 primary. But Mr. Massie does see the issue “exposing a divide in the MAGA base” that he expects to roil the party even before Mr. Trump’s term is over.
Among Republican voters, there is a deeper split on the wisdom of foreign entanglements versus a more hands-off America First approach than is reflected among congressional Republicans, Mr. Massie told me. “Trump ran on not doing more regime change,” he said. But too many lawmakers, he asserted, are too afraid to push back against the administration’s actions, fearing retribution that could hurt their electoral prospects. “There are several of my colleagues who would be voting with me were this any other president,” he said.
Mr. Massie predicted that “the discontinuity between Republican voters and the Republican conference” on such issues will contribute to the party suffering a “shellacking” in the midterms.
The congressman insisted he doesn’t take Mr. Trump’s attacks personally. Politics are politics. “I’m like the inmate that gets pepper-sprayed and put in solitary to keep the other inmates in line,” he said.
And so far, he said, the president’s attacks have been good for his campaign’s bottom line. “I’ve got to figure out how to get him to tweet at me 19 more times, because I raise about $80,000 every time he does,” he joked. Mr. Massie’s fund-raising has been strong. The third quarter of last year was the best of his career, with his campaign pulling in $768,000.
He’s going to need it. MAGA Kentucky, the hostile super PAC led by top Trumpworld figures Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio, already spent a couple of million last year against Mr. Massie. And although Mr. Gallrein did not enter the race until mid-October, his campaign raked in an impressive $1.2 million in the last quarter of 2025.
I asked Mr. Massie if, in the face of such presidential hostility, he ever thought about throwing in the towel like his friend Marjorie Taylor Greene, who left Congress this month. “To wake up to the president having tweeted at you twice since you went to bed, it could get you down,” he started, before insisting that he found it invigorating. He added, “I’ve joked that if they wouldn’t attack me so much, I might get bored and just quit.”
Barring that, it promises to be four long, ugly, expensive months before Kentucky Republicans decide who will have the last laugh in this proxy war — and how compelling they find Mr. Massie’s warnings about a president who would be king.
Michelle Cottle writes about national politics for Opinion. She has covered Washington and politics since the Clinton administration. @mcottle
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