Donald Trump wants to keep congressional Republicans in power through the remainder of his term — but he also wants to use the midterms to punish those who have stepped off the MAGA line. Tuesday’s Republican primary in Kentucky will test the bounds of the president’s control over the party, its voters, and how much power he can still exert over downballot elections.
The race will see Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican who has represented Kentucky’s fourth congressional district since 2012, face off against the Trump-endorsed Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL
“I did not see this coming, but my election has become an inflection point for our whole country,” Massie wrote Tuesday morning as polls opened in Kentucky. “Today we make history.”
Massie — a self-described libertarian and former Tea Party member — has been drawing Trump’s ire since the president’s first term. Trump first called for punitive action in 2020, after Massie forced lawmakers to return to the capital during the Covid-19 pandemic, demanding Republicans “throw Massie out of the Republican Party!”
The rupture between the two men has only worsened. Last year, after Massie opposed the passage of Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill — which included massive cuts to health care and social safety net programs — the president wrote that “Third Rate Congressman Thomas Massie, a Weak and Pathetic RINO from the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky, a place I love, and won big SIX TIMES, must be thrown out of office, ASAP.”
Massie has since become one of the only Republicans in Congress to publicly press the Trump administration on the release of the Epstein files, and to criticize American policy towards Israel and Iran. On Tuesday, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller claimed on X that “on every major important initiative from the Trump Administration Massie joins all Democrats to oppose. That’s why all the communist are out supporting him.”
The Kentucky congressman has repeatedly addressed the claims of willful Democratic collaboration leveled against him by the president’s allies, telling a right wing influencer on Monday that he votes “with Republicans 91 percent of the time. And the nine percent I don’t, they’re taking up for pedophiles, starting another war, or bankrupting our country.”
But Massie’s overwhelmingly Republican voting record means nothing to a president who sets the standard at unquestioned, non-negotiable fealty. Trump endorsed Gallrein as Massie’s opponent before he even entered the race, describing him as a “Brave Combat Veteran,” and a successful businessman.
“Should he decide to challenge Massie, Captain Ed Gallrein has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, ED, RUN,” Trump wrote.
And run Gallrein has — on a policy platform that promises he will remain in lockstep with the president and his movement, and a significant amount of financial backing from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which is also seeking to oust Massie.
On Monday, Gallrein campaigned with Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth — a sign of the direct hand the Trump administration is taking in its attempts to remove a congressman critical of the president. Hegseth claimed he was there as a private citizen (hard to believe there’s such a distinction for a Cabinet secretary currently at war), and attempted to tie voters’ decision in the primary to support for the president. “President Trump does not need more people in Washington who are trying to make a point, especially from his own party. He needs people willing to help him win, to vote with him when it matters the most,” he said. “Thomas Massie’s record speaks for itself, too. Too much grandstanding, too few great votes, years of acting like being difficult is the same thing as being courageous. It is not.”
In a Truth Social post published on Monday, Trump issued a lengthy attack against Massie, after also having attacked him over the weekend. “The Great People of Kentucky are wise to Massie — He only votes against the Republican Party, making life very easy for the Radical Left,” he wrote. “Unlike ‘lightweight’ Massie, a totally ineffective LOSER who has failed us so badly, CAPTAIN ED GALLREIN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN.”
Polling shows Gallrein could potentially steal the nomination from Massie, and affirm Trump’s control over the Republican base. So confident is Trump that his public pressure campaign to oust Massie will succeed, that he’s already eying new targets.
On Monday, the president threatened longtime loyal soldier Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) with a primary challenge of her own, after she campaigned with Massie ahead of his primary. Boebert has been one of a handful of Republicans to break with Trump on the Epstein scandal, and has refused to endorse the appropriation of additional funds for the war in Iran.
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), once the human embodiment of MAGA politics, left Congress at the beginning of the year after a public break with the president. Greene wrote on Monday that only she and three other members of the GOP caucus — Massie, Boebert, and Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) — had joined Democrats in signing the discharge petition forcing a vote on the release of the Epstein files. Trump “told Speaker Johnson not to allow the vote to happen, but we courageously went against the President and refused to budge and overrode the Speaker to force the vote on record,” Greene wrote. In a separate post, she encouraged Kentuckians to “vote for Thomas Massie, who was the ONLY Republican to vote with me to defund Israel and is against funding foreign wars!!!”
It may be a doomed effort to keep Massie afloat. Outside of the polling showing Gallrein with an edge, a slew of Trump-endorsed challengers recently won their primaries in Indiana, after the president called on lawmakers who had refused to go along with his midterm gerrymandering push to be primaried. Over the weekend, Republican Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana was easily defeated by Trump-backed challenger Rep. Julia Letlow (R-La.) and state Treasurer John Fleming, who advanced to a runoff. On Sunday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) made clear what the message was to members of the GOP: “If you try to destroy President Trump, you’re gonna lose, because this is the party of Donald Trump,” he said.
But while Trump is racking up wins in these primaries, he may still lose the war. The president’s approval rating is at a historic low and still falling. Americans continue to be battered by the increasing cost of the war in Iran, which has surged gas and fuel prices, spiked inflation, and worsened the existing cost-of-living crisis. Democrats dislike him more than ever, Republican discontent is increasing, and the critical swaths of independent voters that swung the 2024 election Trump’s way are abandoning him en masse.
While a MAGA candidate might do well in a closed primary with the president’s full attention, Republicans tend to underperform when he isn’t on the ballot. Even if Massie’s congressional career doesn’t survive beyond Tuesday, the electoral consequences of two years of Trump’s reckless governance may be coming home to roost this November.
