A defiant Thomas Massie takes on the MAGA machine in heated Kentucky primary
By Lauren Fox, Sarah Ferris, CNN
(CNN) — Kentucky may be the last place in America where you can take on President Donald Trump as a hard-right Republican and carry a GOP voting card in Congress. At least for now.
A pair of twangy Kentucky rebels – Rep. Thomas Massie and Sen. Rand Paul – are teaming up to defend Massie in the biggest fight of his political career as Trump intensifies efforts to oust the seven-term Republican from Washington next year.
Massie is facing the full might of Trump’s political operation in a nasty GOP primary in northeast Kentucky, where MAGA world has poured millions to support the president’s preferred candidate, former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein. And Massie and his allies argue it’s no ordinary race – it’s an attempt to silence the president’s remaining critics in Congress.
“I think that’s one of the reasons they’re attacking me and putting so much money into my race, is to keep the others in line, and so far, it’s working,” Massie told CNN in a recent interview. “I just think there’s so much political pressure from the president and the people surrounding him that they can’t withstand it.”
The attacks from the president have only intensified since the House margins have narrowed to just a single vote – giving Massie outsized power in the fractious chamber. In the last week, Trump personally went after Massie with crass comments about his recent marriage and even made a swipe at the National Prayer Breakfast calling him a “moron.” (Paul’s response? “Doesn’t sound very charitable to me.”)
So far, Paul seems to be the only congressional Republican working to help Massie hang on in what some consider the last vestige of the pre-Trump Tea Party brand of fiscal restraint and hands-off government. The Kentucky senator told CNN he plans to campaign with him for several days this spring ahead of the May primary, after other joint events last fall. Massie told CNN the only other help on the stump he’s been offered is former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who left Congress last month after Trump’s repeated tirades against her.
Even Speaker Mike Johnson told CNN that he is not committed to backing Massie, a stunning move for a sitting party leader.
“I generally run the incumbent protection program here. But it’s gotta be a cooperation. I gotta have a conversation with Thomas to see if he wants to be on the team,” Johnson told CNN when asked if he would back Massie in the primary. “Stay tuned on that.”
In today’s GOP, support for Massie has become its own kind of political litmus test. That includes in Kentucky’s heated three-way Senate primary, where one of those contenders, GOP Rep. Andy Barr, formally endorsed Massie’s opponent in a bid for Trump’s support in his own race. (One of Barr’s opponents, Nate Morris, quickly followed.)
And last week, Trump endorsed against a MAGA hardliner in a special election in Georgia who has been supportive of Massie.
But Massie remains undeterred. Both he and Paul remain unwilling to engage in the kind of MAGA-world apology tour that many of his colleagues have unfurled to save their own political careers. And Paul told CNN that he believed some of Trump’s attacks – including against Massie’s wife, who is a former Paul staffer – would backfire in the primary. (Massie was widowed in mid-2024 and recently remarried.)
“I think a lot of people at home are seeing the attacks on Thomas Massie’s wife as being unseemly,” Paul told CNN. “People are rallying around him because to talk about his hurried wedding, and, ‘Oh, she’s much younger than him.’ … I think they’re going to react the opposite to what the president thinks.”
Paul believes that Massie can fend off the challenge, pointing to his popularity in the district but added: “It’s not easy to have a president of your own party do that.”
Trump and his allies have threatened to spend tens of millions of dollars in the fight. Still, even some senior Republicans in Washington remain doubtful that Trump’s machine can defeat Massie.
Massie’s district – which runs from the outer bands of the Louisville suburbs, up north to the suburbs of Cincinnati all the way to the outskirts of Appalachia – includes vast swaths of farmland and voters with a libertarian streak. Trump won there with 67% of the vote in 2024 and Massie ran in the general uncontested.
State Rep. Steve Doan, an ally of the congressman, told CNN he believed Massie would still prevail.
“I always frame this race as mommy and daddy are fighting. We love Trump and we love Thomas. It is a DC fight. It is not a Kentucky fight,” Doan said.
“It’s going to be really hard to convince the people of this district who have consistently voted for Trump and Massie that a Lindsey Graham donor who is going to continue to vote for foreign aid in Ukraine and bailouts and wasteful spending is going to be a better fit in Washington, DC, than Thomas Massie,” he continued.
The Gallrein campaign shot back that Massie is “anti-Trump” and votes with Democrats on key issues, while their candidate has the president’s endorsement.
“Ed Gallrein is endorsed by President Trump who won the district by 35 points. That alone shows Thomas Massie is nowhere close to in line with KY04,” campaign spokesman Lance Trover said.
For his part, Massie has only dug in against the president in recent weeks, championing the probe into Jeffrey Epstein that Trump sought to kill while supporting Democratic measures to rein in the president’s powers abroad.
No other Republican, besides perhaps Paul, has so often, and so publicly, voted against a Trump priority.
Both Massie and Paul have openly criticized Trump on issues like government funding, voting against Congress’ massive spending package last month. They’ve opposed his actions in Iran and Venezuela and the two were some of the only GOP votes against his massive tax breaks and immigration enforcement package last year. (The only other Republican to oppose Trump’s massive policy bill was centrist Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, who represents one of his party’s bluest seats in the House.)
Massie’s opponent, Gallrein, who is also a local farmer, has explicitly framed his campaign as a referendum on loyalty to Trump. In his most recent ad, Gallrein depicts himself as “Trump’s handpicked choice.”
But as much as Massie’s brand of independence may be revered in the 4th District, in Washington, members of his own congressional delegation acknowledge that Massie’s streak of opposition is creating headaches for party leaders.
“I think the thing that makes the Republicans from Kentucky frustrated with Massie is he is always tweeting like negative stuff about other Republicans, not just Trump. … We are all trying to work together to help the state and help the president be successful and we take a lot of incoming from Massie’s Twitter followers a lot,” said Rep. James Comer, another Kentucky Republican and chairman of the powerful House Oversight Committee.
Rep. Brett Guthrie, another Republican in the state, lamented it’s not that lawmakers must adhere to the president’s every whim, but that Massie can seldom be counted on for any of Trump’s priorities.
“I think people have disagreed … but Thomas has disagreed almost a lot,” Guthrie said.
Massie’s adherence to his own libertarian streak has become even more acute since Johnson has seen his majority dwindle to historic lows.
Last week during a vote to fund the government, Johnson couldn’t afford to lose more than a single Republican on a procedural rule vote, but leadership was operating as if they couldn’t lose anyone because they knew they’d already lost Massie.
For his part, Massie makes no apologies about his rigid adherence to his beliefs nor does he back down when challenged by Trump. After the prayer breakfast Thursday, Massie tweeted, “The President of the United States called me a moron at the National Prayer Breakfast this morning because I’m still fighting for what he promised the American people.”
Asked if he had any other comment to the president’s attacks via text Thursday, Massie added only: “I feel blessed to know I’m in Trump’s prayers.”
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CNN’s Camila DeChalus contributed to this report.
