President Donald Trump often seems like the sun around which other Republicans orbit, setting their direction and movements — and, every so often, slingshotting one out of his solar system when they displease him.
But one GOP lawmaker has consistently found his own political gravity, surviving clash after clash against the party’s standard bearer: Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
Massie was one of the few Republicans staunchly opposed to the Republican Party’s sweeping bill to enact key pieces of Trump’s agenda this year, such as extending the 2017 tax cuts and boosting spending for immigration enforcement. And he has not shied away from voicing his criticism what Trump has dubbed his “one big beautiful bill,” which, in Massie’s words, amounts to a “ticking debt bomb,” represents “Biden-level spending and increased deficits,” and contains a concession he said would “primarily benefit limousine liberals in blue states.”
Trump, never shy with words, has blasted Massie as a “grandstander” who “should be voted out of office” — criticism Massie has pointed to in fundraising appeals for his own campaign. It’s not a new dynamic for the Kentucky Republican, one of the rare Republicans who has found himself at odds with Trump on multiple occasions but has lived to tell the tale. The question is whether he can do it again in 2026, and whether the tension evaporates as it has before or if Trump actually takes the step of backing a primary challenger this time.
“That’s a step up,” Massie said Tuesday, speaking about Trump’s threats. “In 2020, he wanted me thrown out of the GOP, so losing a seat wouldn’t be as bad as being thrown out, would it?”
“I think that’s hyperbole on his part, I’m not worried about it,” Massie continued.
Massie, a staunch libertarian who came to Washington as the tea party took over the House Republican conference in the early 2010s, has indeed found himself crosswise with Trump over the years.
He blasted early attempts by Republicans to repeal Obamacare in 2017. He sided with Democrats in an attempt to overturn Trump’s emergency declaration on the southern border in 2019. And his opposition to the 2020 Covid relief package during the early days of the pandemic led to Trump labeling him a “third rate Grandstander” on social media and encouraging a primary challenge against him.
Massie has long observed that he and Trump aren’t coming from the same ideological roots. In 2017, he told the Washington Examiner that Trump’s election had caused him to re-evaluate his assumptions about what motivated Republican voters during and after the tea party era.
“After some soul searching I realized when they voted for Rand [Paul] and Ron [Paul] and me in these primaries, they weren’t voting for libertarian ideas — they were voting for the craziest son of a bitch in the race,” Massie said. “And Donald Trump won best in class, as we had up until he came along.”
Massie revisited the quote in a brief interview with NBC News last year on the sidelines of a presidential campaign event for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in Iowa. Massie was one of the few members of Congress to endorse a Trump challenger in the 2024 primaries, and he withheld his endorsement of Trump in the general election until the race’s final days.
“I used to think I wanted Congress to have more crazy candidates,” Massie said last year. “And I have decided that is not the case. And I do think there’s a backlash. People are looking for somebody that’s just a solid conservative. I think we’re tired of crazy and the voters are too.”
“In the race for crazy, I used to be able to lead the lap sometimes,” Massie added with a smile. “Now I can’t even stay on the lead lap.”
Despite the high-profile dissents and social media confrontations, while Trump previously mused about finding a primary opponent to topple Massie, no serious one has materialized.
Massie cruised to victory in his primary months after Trump’s 2020 threat, and he even won Trump’s endorsement ahead of his 2022 primary.
To hear Massie describe it, he’s weathered it fine. Other Republicans have lost primaries or decided to retire, sometimes amid tanking poll numbers, in the face of Trump’s wrath. Not him.
“I’ve got the Trump antibodies,” Massie told Fox News in 2024 when asked if he’d face political retribution for not endorsing Trump’s primary bid. He added, “Trump came at me and I won my re-election, so I’m not worried about it.”
He currently faces only one Republican challenger, Nicole Lee Ethington, a nurse who has criticized Massie on social media for his “no” vote on the recent legislation. But it remains to be seen how hard Trump or his allies might try to go after Massie in next year’s GOP primary. The Kentucky Republican eclipsed 75% of the vote in each of his last three primaries.
Still, Massie’s libertarian politics mean he’s regularly found himself in the minority among congressional Republicans, particularly on the issues of spending, America’s military involvement abroad and the government’s use of surveillance at home.
Once again, he’s found himself in a familiar place in Trump’s Republican Party.
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