MAYSVILLE, Ky. — Candidate after candidate pledged their allegiance to President Donald Trump at the local GOP dinner. Then Republican Rep. Thomas Massie took the mic.
“A congressman, unlike a soldier, does not work for the commander in chief,” Massie said.
The commander in chief had declared Massie a “real loser” and recruited a retired Navy SEAL to challenge him. Now, Massie, 55, was trying to persuade voters in deep-red northern Kentucky to keep him in office, fresh off his biggest showdown yet with the White House — his bill that forced the release of millions of government files on the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“If you want a rubber stamp, you’ve got an option this year in this primary,” Massie told about 100 people assembled for dinner in Maysville, a town of about 9,000 on the Ohio River. “But if you want somebody who will go up there and try to make the best decision … then I’m your guy.”
Massie’s bid for reelection is shaping up as the ultimate test of Trump’s clout and the GOP base’s tolerance for those who challenge him. In a party defined for the past decade by loyalty to Trump, Massie is clashing openly with him — even mocking him — while arguing that the president has veered from his “America First” campaign promises.
Trump allies have made ousting Massie a priority, pledging to spend whatever it takes to defeat him. To many on the right, Massie is a nuisance: Republicans control the House so narrowly that they can pass legislation only with near-unanimity, and Massie is known for breaking with the party on key votes. He was one of two Republican House members who voted against Trump’s signature legislation last summer. He joined Democrats last month in a failed attempt to restrict the president’s military intervention in Venezuela. And he has refused to support GOP-backed bills over concerns about the national deficit.
“He’s got a problem for every solution,” said Ed Gallrein, the 67-year-old farmer and veteran Trump picked to replace Massie.
The outcome of the May 19 primary will send a message to other Republicans. A Massie defeat would further solidify Trump’s command of the party, rebuking a vocal minority on the right — exemplified by Massie’s ally Marjorie Taylor Greene — who have questioned the president’s alignment with his base in recent months.
A victory for the congressman, on the other hand, could embolden other GOP lawmakers to defy Trump. A farmer who lives off-off-the grid and has served in the House since 2012, Massie calls himself “the inmate that gets pepper sprayed and put in solitary” to set an example.
James Blair, the White House deputy chief of staff who oversees political affairs, said Massie has stood in the way of Republican priorities such as border funding. “The voters will retire Massie from Congress because they agree with President Trump and disagree with Massie and the Radical Left Democrats,” he said in a statement.
Some Republicans who dissent from Trump have chosen to retire: Greene left the House last month, while Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) declined to seek reelection this year. Others have been pushed out: Former congresswoman Liz Cheney lost her leadership position and then her Wyoming House seat. Few Republicans have beaten back Trump’s efforts to oust them — among them, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who infuriated Trump by accepting the 2020 election results, and Rep. Dan Newhouse (Washington), who voted to impeach Trump.
Massie’s race stands out for the political capital Trump has invested, and for Massie’s decision, in solidly red territory, to campaign on his clashes with the president rather than sidestep them.
At the GOP dinner in Maysville late last month, cheers broke out as Massie turned to a “little bill called the Epstein Files Transparency Act,” which he led with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California.
“This scandal, what’s fully uncovered, is bigger than Watergate,” Massie said.
The Justice Department had just released 3 million more documents from its files on Epstein, fulfilling a years-long push on the right for more information on the disgraced financier and his associates. The White House initially lobbied against Massie’s bill calling for the files’ release, and Trump lashed out last year at Republicans interested in Epstein, accusing them of playing into a “hoax.”
But Massie joined with Democrats and a handful of other Republicans to force a vote on the issue. The legislation passed with overwhelming support, and Trump signed it.
As other candidates spoke at the dinner, Massie checked his phone. Campaign finance reports were coming out that night, and a super PAC led by some of Trump’s top campaign advisers had just disclosed spending about $1 million more on advertising against him.
Massie was raising more money than he ever had in his political career and suggested his campaign could spend $4 million over the course of the race. But Gallrein, the Trump-endorsed challenger, had outpaced Massie in the latest finance reports.
Massie knew Trump’s political operation had far more money to spend.
“I think they believe $20 million would be enough,” he said of the Trump team, “but it’s not going to be enough.”
Trump’s grudge with Massie goes back years. In 2020, the lawmaker upset both parties by delaying a vote on a $2 trillion coronavirus rescue package that he opposed, forcing lawmakers to return to Washington to pass the bill. Trump declared Massie a “third rate Grandstander” who should be thrown out of the GOP.
But Trump never endorsed an opponent, and Massie won his primary with 81 percent of the vote.
The president’s frustration with Massie erupted again last year, as the congressman criticized Trump’s bombing of Iran — “not constitutional,” Massie said — and became an obstacle to Trump’s signature tax-and-spending legislation, dubbed the One Big Beautiful Bill. Top strategists from Trump’s 2024 campaign launched a super PAC called MAGA KY that began spending on ads against Massie that summer as GOP leadership tried to get Trump’s bill over the finish line.
With Massie and a handful of other Republican holdouts preventing the bill from advancing, Massie recalled, he proposed a private deal: He wouldn’t vote for the legislation, but he would help get it to the floor if Trump’s allies stopped their attack ads.
Trump agreed, Massie said, in a phone call that included the two of them and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana). The bill moved forward. But the anti-Massie ads kept running.
“I thought we had a deal,” Massie recalled telling the speaker.
“I thought we did, too,” Johnson replied, according to Massie. Johnson’s office declined to comment.
Massie said he hasn’t spoken with Trump since.
Asked about the deal Massie described, Chris LaCivita — a co-manager of Trump’s 2024 campaign who is working to oust Massie — said he doesn’t “put any stock in the words of someone who continually betrays his constituents by siding with radical leftists.”
A White House spokesman, Davis Ingle, did not comment directly on the episode, saying in a statement that Massie “cares more about peacocking for his radical Democrat friends and liberal media allies than delivering for the men and women of Kentucky’s 4th district.”
Gallrein, Massie’s opponent, said he got an invite to the White House in October. Days later, the Republican — who ran unsuccessfully for state Senate in 2024 but has never held office — was talking with Trump in the Oval Office. Twenty-five minutes in, Gallrein recalled, Trump said “he needed me to run.”
At the Maysville dinner, Gallrein focused on introducing himself rather than attacking. But he looked out in Massie’s direction as he said Trump needs people to fight “against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and those who join them.”
“I will stand shoulder to shoulder with President Trump and the Republican Party,” he said.
With little independent polling on the race and more than three months until the primary, it’s hard to assess who has the advantage. Kentucky has a history of reelecting Republicans with independent streaks such as Massie and Sen. Rand Paul, another vocal critic of some Trump policies. And Andy Beshear, a Democratic governor with a strong personal brand, won reelection even as Trump had won the state by a landslide.
Voters in the 4th Congressional District appeared split about Massie in interviews.
“He’s not a team player,” said Republican Wayne Helton, 82, who plans to vote against Massie.
“He votes Republican 90 percent of the time,” said independent Gary Steeley, 50, who voted for Trump but still supports Massie.
Sixty-year-old Tim Dever, a frequent attendee of GOP events who lives in Ohio, just across the river from Massie’s district, walked up to the congressman as he spoke with a reporter to say that Massie’s speech that night had changed his opinion.
“Now the word RINO doesn’t come to mind,” he told Massie, who laughed.
Kadia Goba in Washington contributed to this report.
The post A Republican lawmaker embarks on his biggest showdown yet with Trump appeared first on Washington Post.
