President Donald Trump often seems to be the sun around which other Republicans orbit, establishing his direction and movements, and, from time to time, shaking one of his solar system when they dislike it.
But a legislator of the Republican party has constantly found his own political severity, surviving the clash after the clash against the standard bearer of the party: the representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky.
Massie was one of the few Republicans who firmly opposed the bill of the Republican Party to promulgate key pieces of the Trump agenda this year, such as extending the tax cuts of 2017 and increasing the expense for the application of immigration. And he has not avoided expressing his criticisms what Trump has called his “a great project of beautiful law”, which, in Massie’s words, is equivalent to a “debt
Trump, never shy with the words, has criticized Massie as a “grandfather” who “should be expelled from his position”; The criticisms of the criticisms that Massie has indicated in the collection of funds for his own campaign. It is not a new dynamic for the Republican of Kentucky, one of the rare Republicans who has disagreed with Trump on multiple occasions, but has lived to tell the story. The question is whether you can do it again in 2026, and if the tension evaporates as it has done before or if Trump really gives the step to support a main challenger this time.
“That is a step forward,” Massie said Tuesday, talking about Trump’s threats. “In 2020, he wanted them to expose me from the Republican Party, so losing a seat would not be as bad as being expelled, right?”
“I think it’s a hyperbole on his part, I’m not worried about that,” Massie continued.
Massie, a libertarian staunch that came to Washington when Tea Party took over the Republican Conference of the Chamber in the early 2010s, in fact has been found in a cross in cross with Trump over the years.
He criticized the first attempts of the Republicans to repeal Obamacare in 2017. He put himself on the side of the Democrats in an attempt to cancel Trump’s emergency declaration on the southern border in 2019. and his opposition to the help pack of 2020 Covid during the first days of the pandemic led Trump to label him a “third nanny” in the social media and encourage a primary challenge against him.
Massie has long observed that he and Trump do not come from the same ideological roots. In 2017, he told Washington examiner that Trump’s elections had caused him to reassess his assumptions about what motivated Republican voters during and after the era of the Tea Party.
“After a search for the soul, I realized when they voted for Rand [Paul] and rum [Paul] And in these primaries, they did not vote for libertarian ideas: they were voting for the craziest son of a dog in the race, “Massie said.” And Donald Trump won better in class, as we had until he arrived. “
Massie reviewed the appointment in a brief interview with NBC News last year outside a presidential campaign event for the governor of Florida Ron Desantis in Iowa. Massie was one of the few members of Congress in supporting a Trump challenger in the primary of 2024, and retained his backing to Trump in the general elections until the last days of the race.
“I used to think that I wanted Congress to have more crazy candidates,” Massie said last year. “And I have decided that this is not the case. And I think there is a reaction.
“In Crazy’s race, sometimes I used to lead the lap,” Massie added with a smile. “Now I can’t even stay in the front turn.”
Despite high profile dissidents and confrontations of social networks, while Trump previously reflected on finding a main opponent to overthrow Massie, a serious one has not materialized.
Massie came to victory in her primary months after Trump’s threat, and even won Trump’s support before her 2022 primaries.
To listen to Massie describe it, he has resisted it well. Other Republicans have lost primaries or decided to retire, sometimes in the midst of tank survey numbers, in front of Trump’s anger. No him.
“I have Trump’s antibodies,” Massie told Fox News in 2024 when asked if he would face political remuneration for not supporting Trump’s main offer. He added: “Trump came to me and I won my re -election, so it doesn’t worry me.”
He currently faces only a republican challenger, Nicole Lee Erhington, a nurse who has criticized Massie on social networks for her “no” vote on recent legislation. But it remains to be seen how hard Trump or his allies could try to go after Massie in the Republican primaries next year. Kentucky Republican eclipsed 75% of the votes in each of its last three primary.
Even so, Massie’s libertarian policy means that it has been found regularly in the minority among the Republicans of Congress, particularly in spending issues, the military participation of the United States abroad and the use of surveillance in the Government’s home.
Once again, it has been found in a family place in Trump’s Republican Party.
