If Rep. Thomas Massie is right, Republicans in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District are more loyal to Trumpism than they are to President Donald Trump, and they believe he is too.
“People support Trump, but they also support what he campaigned on,” Massie said in a phone interview with NBC News on Tuesday. “When people support me, they are supporting the things that Donald Trump campaigned to actually get done. And when they support Donald Trump, they are supporting the man they voted for in the last election.”
Massie’s theory will be put to the test on Wednesday.
That’s when Trump, who has called Massie a “moron,” a “lightweight” and a “loser,” takes their long-running feud into Massie’s backyard with a visit to Hebron, Kentucky, outside Cincinnati. Trump has endorsed Massie’s opponent, farmer and former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, and Trump-aligned super PAC MAGA KY has spent $2.6 million on ads in the race, according to AdImpact. The total approaches $5 million for Gallrein and against Massie when other outside political groups are included.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt avoided classifying the trip as political in nature when asked at a briefing Tuesday why Trump planned to make two stops in Ohio and Kentucky, where he will speak at the facility of a packaging company.
“Why not?” Leavitt said. “The president will be joined by legislators from both states whom he greatly admires, respects and supports. And he will meet with business owners in both places and talk about the economy, which is, of course, of utmost importance to him.”
But Massie has been feuding with Trump for most of the president’s second term, most recently over a pair of issues in which Massie took a leadership role: a successful effort to force the Justice Department to release Jeffrey Epstein’s files and a failed attempt to stop the Iran war. He sees Trump’s arrival as political revenge aimed at boosting Gallrein.
“My opponent is running a Joe Biden-type campaign from the basement (he refuses to debate, he doesn’t appear in public forums) and I think the president is coming to try to resurrect and shore up his campaign,” Massie told NBC News.
An adviser to Gallrein’s campaign said Trump asked Gallrein to run and is now “delivering,” adding that Trump’s “presence will galvanize his supporters for this race.”
The main problem, the adviser said, is that Massie has been counterproductive for a president who has limited time to implement his agenda before his term expires in January 2029.
“There is a district that voted overwhelmingly for the president and they increasingly see Massie as an impediment to Trump,” said the adviser, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Trump’s endorsement has been the most valuable currency in the Republican arena for more than a decade. Last week, Rep. Dan Crenshaw, the only Republican in the Texas House delegation to fail, lost his re-election fight. And Texas Republicans are on tenterhooks as they await Trump’s decision whether to endorse the re-election bid of Sen. John Cornyn, Cornyn’s runoff opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton, or anyone.
From time to time, Republicans have survived Trump’s efforts to unseat them, but many have not. Of the 10 Republican House members who voted to impeach him after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, only two made it past their midterm primaries in 2022. Only one of them, David Valadao of California, is still in the House.
Massie’s goal is to convince voters that their drift from Trump is the result of their own consistency and Trump’s drift. In that way, he is vindicating Trump in a different way than Gallrein, who has a more direct argument that there is too much daylight between Massie and Trump for Republicans in the district.
After all, Massie was one of two Republicans who voted against Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which, among other things, enacted a sweeping tax cut, provided for the completion of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and banned federal funding for transgender surgeries for minors.
Massie, a longtime deficit hawk, opposed the measure because it was projected to add up to $4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade.
Massie says his resolution on Iran, which would have required Trump to obtain congressional authorization to continue using military force, is consistent with the values Trump campaigned on when he touted his record of not starting “new wars” in his first term. Likewise, he says that demanding Epstein’s files and pushing for legislation aligned with the goals of the Make America Healthy Again movement are in line with the sentiments of the MAGA movement.
But Trump is not the only one who presents Massie as his adversary.
Hardline pro-Israel donors have lined up to amplify Gallrein’s message, pouring money into several entities, including the Kentucky chapter of MAGA Inc., which longtime Trump advisers Chris LaCivita and Tony Fabrizio created last year with the express purpose of unseating Massie.
In one ad, which features a photo of Gallrein in the Oval Office with Trump, the Republican Jewish Committee Victory Fund tells Kentucky voters they have a choice: “Gallrein and Trump or Massie, who supports Iran.” The ad includes images of Massie alongside the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who are Muslim.
Massie said there is more at stake than just his own re-election.
“If I can win this fight, I will show that we have a republic, that the legislature does not work for the executive branch,” he said. “And I think it will encourage other members of Congress who right now are afraid, even when they think what I’m doing is right, they’re afraid to contradict the president.”
He bristled at outside spending, including spending by pro-Israel donors, and said his defeat would signal that the election is for sale to billionaires, some of whom have donated to groups that advertise against him.
At the same time, he is trying to combat the perception that Gallrein is perfectly aligned with Trump.
In an ad released Tuesday that his campaign said would air on television in conjunction with Trump’s visit, Massie displays voter registration cards showing Gallrein left the Republican Party when Trump secured the party’s nomination in 2016 (reregistering as an independent) and then returned when Trump left office in 2021. The ad begins with a photo of Massie and Trump together giving a thumbs-up gesture.
Gallrein said in a statement that his departure from the party was not a snub to Trump.
“I was proud to vote for President Trump all three times and donate in 2020 and 2024,” he said, adding that Massie “stands with Democrats to vote against President Trump every week in Congress.”
In the end, the size of Trump’s footprint in the Fourth District can be measured by the fact that both candidates lay claim to different parts of it (Trump’s agenda and the promises of Trumpism), as former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., observed in an X post accompanied by a crying-laughing emoji.
“Dang,” Gaetz subtweeted a post with Massie’s new commercial. “Two people who don’t like Trump hug Trump in their ads”.
But Trump only hugs Gallrein back.
