Rep. Thomas Massie lost his primary election to a Republican challenger after more than a year of clashing with President Donald Trump on everything from spending to the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
Massie was beaten by retired Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein in Kentucky’s 4th district after a bitterly personal contest. The president had backed Gallrein and on Monday, dispatched Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to campaign for Gallrein.
Massie had become an increasingly loud critic on the Republican side of the aisle. He opposed making Mike Johnson speaker of the House in early 2025. He would then vote against Trump’s massive tax cut legislation known as the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” on the account that it would explode the budget deficit.
Ahead of the contest, Trump put out a statement calling on Massie to stop putting out an ad that he said made it seem Trump supported Massie.
“Horrible Congressman Thomas Massie put out an old Endorsement, from many years ago, of him by me long before I found out that he was the Worst Congressman in the History of our Country,” Trump said on Truth Social. “I endorsed Ed Gallrein, a true American Patriot, which Massie knows full well, so the statement that he put out is fraudulent, just like HE is fraudulent. WITHDRAW YOUR FAKE STATEMENT, MASSIE, RIGHT NOW!”
But the real divide would come when Massie would team up with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) to file a discharge petition that forced a vote to release files related to Epstein, the late convicted sex offender.
A longtime libertarian Republican who lives off the grid and became famous for posting a photo of his family brandishing rifles for a Christmas photo, Massie became an unlikely advocate for victims of Epstein.
But as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, he became an outspoken advocate, inviting survivors of Epstein’s operation to Capitol Hill on multiple occasions.
Trump had long called the investigation a “hoax.” But thanks to the support of Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, the vote came to the floor and passed almost unanimously.
But when the Trump administration did not fully release the files, Massie would clash with Attorney General Pam Bondi before she resigned from her perch atop the Justice Department.
A noninterventionist libertarian in the tradition of his fellow Kentuckian Sen. Rand Paul, Massie broke with Trump during the administration’s war with Iran. Massie voted with Democrats on War Powers Act resolutions to restrain Trump’s military actions in both Venezuela and Iran.
The victory is the latest chapter in Trump’s revenge tour against heretics in the Republican Party, whom Trump deems as insufficiently loyal to him. Last month, five Republican state senators in Indiana who rebuffed his calls to redraw the state’s congressional maps mid-decade lost their primaries.
Over the weekend, Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) failed to clear the runoff for the Republican primary for Senate. Cassidy was one of three Republican senators left in the chamber who had voted to convict Trump for his actions on January 6, 2021.
The losses reveal just how much support for Trump has become a standard for being a Republican. Earlier this year, Greene, one of Trump’s most vocal supporters in Congress, resigned from Congress after he retracted his endorsement of her because she supported releasing files related to Epstein.
A hardline conservative, Massie joined Congress in 2012. Despite frequently voting with the hardline House Freedom Caucus, Massie never joined the group, choosing to move at his own pace.
Still, he occasionally showed a willingness to be a pain to both parties, earning himself the moniker of “Mr. No.” During the Covid-19 pandemic, he rankled colleagues and Trump for forcing a recorded vote for an economic relief package.
Nonetheless, he relished the title.
Trump shows no signs of slowing down his revenge tour. On Tuesday, he endorsed Texas’s MAGA Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Republican primary against Sen. John Cornyn because Cornyn “was not supportive of me when times were tough.”
And already, Trump is using Massie’s primary as fuel for the next step of his primary. After Boebert campaigned for Massie, he asked if any Republicans wanted to run against Boebert.
