Thomas Massie is the Republican Donald Trump wants gone more than almost any other -- and now the president is on his way to Kentucky to prove it.
Trump will give remarks at Verst Logistics in Hebron, Kentucky, where he is expected to rail against Massie and boost his handpicked challenger, Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy SEAL, although the formal guidance for the event describes the speech as 'remarks on the economy.'
'The President will be in Kentucky to breathe life into my opponent's Biden-like basement campaign,' Massie noted in a Tuesday night post on X.
Massie has accused his Republican primary opponent of abandoning the party in the wake of Trump's 2016 election win, brandishing voter registration cards he claims show the challenger quit the GOP and didn't re-register until 2021.
'I call them voter transition cards. He transitioned out of the party and stayed out for five years,' Massie said at a GOP event last weekend, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer.
The cards - posted on Massie's X account and front and center in a new campaign ad - are central to his case against Gallrein, whom Massie is portraying as a fair-weather Republican whose party loyalty only returned when Trump was out of power.
Gallrein's campaign did not dispute the validity of Massie's claims, choosing to blast the incumbent through a statement from spokeswoman Alexandra Wilkes who told the Daily Mail, 'clearly Thomas Massie is desperate because he knows the fact is that he has been exposed as a RINO and an ally of the Democrats and he has fallen to the bottom in the polls.'
'Now he's pretending to be a Trump ally and Conservative Republican after repeatedly joining with the Squad and AOC to vote against President Trump and the Republican agenda - it's laughable,' Wilkes added.
US Representative Thomas Massie, Republican from Kentucky, faces his toughest primary yet with Trump-backed challenger Ed Gallrein
Gallrein himself also hit back, telling the Daily Mail that he 'was proud to vote for President Trump all three times and donate in 2020 and 2024, unlike Thomas Massie, who campaigned against him in 2024 and sides with the Democrats to vote against President Trump every week in Congress.'
In a Wednesday morning Truth Social post, Trump jabbed at Massie calling him the 'WORST Republican Congressman in the long and fabled history of the United States Congress,' while boosting Gallrein as 'a great American Patriot.'
Trump also re-uppd a previous post endorsing Gallrein on his social media site Truth Social on Tuesday night, declaring that voters in Massie's district 'desperately want to get rid of Thomas Massie, the Worst "Republican" Congressman we have had in many years.'
Senator Rand Paul, a fellow Kentucky Republican with his own libertarian streak, piled on in Massie's defense -- writing on X: 'Oh my, @MassieforKY opponent quit the GOP when Donald Trump won and only came back after Biden was elected.'
Massie's loyalty to principles, not the President, has repeatedly landed him in Trump's crosshairs, with increasing frequency since the commander in chief returned to the White House.
The incumbent congressman's top unforgivable sin was spearheading the congressional release of the millions of Department of Justice Files relating to deceased pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein, despite Trump's wishes.
Massie predominantly worked with Democrats to compel Congress to release the files, although all but one Republican in the House voted for the final bill ordering the release, and Trump ultimately signed it.
The incumbent has also moved to limit Trump's military actions, co-sponsoring War Powers resolutions on both Iran and Venezuela with his top partner in crime, California Democrat Ro Khanna.
Massie has additionally sided with the most progressive Democrats on their votes against sending aid to Israel because his libertarian worldview means that he does not back foreign aid to any country. The Republican was also one of two 'no' votes on the GOP's signature 'Big, Beautiful, Bill' spending package last summer.