Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie is Trump revenge tour’s next target

After a string of wins in Republican primary elections this spring, President Donald Trump is preparing for the next stop on his revenge tour: Kentucky, where Rep. Thomas Massie, a perennial thorn in the side of House GOP leaders and the president, is locked in a bitter fight for his political future.

This month alone Trump has successfully led the charge to oust a group of Indiana state Republicans who opposed his redistricting push, and helped end the reelection bid of Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment.

Now Trump has his sights set on Massie, the Libertarian-leaning Republican with a fierce independent streak, who will face off on Tuesday against Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL who was recruited to the race by the president. 

Massie is an anti-abortion rights, pro-gun, fiscal conservative known for wearing a homemade debt clock on his lapel around the Capitol. But he has bucked the president on the release of files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and regularly votes against GOP priorities.

Trump wants him gone. And on Monday he fired off a series of posts targeting Massie.

“The worst Congressman in the long and storied history of the Republican Party, is Thomas Massie. He is an obstructionist and a fool. Vote him out of office tomorrow, Tuesday. It will be a great day for America! President DJT,” Trump wrote in one.

“We’re in a fight against the worst congressman in the history of our country, his name is Thomas Massie, he’s from Kentucky. I hope you’re going to put him out of business tomorrow. He is so bad,” Trump said in a video, posted late Monday afternoon, while seated in the Oval Office.

Primaries like the one on Tuesday in Kentucky are effectively a referendum on Trump’s grip on the Republican Party.

Trump’s approval ratings have plummeted in recent months as prices rise in response to the Iran war, and GOP defectors in Congress have at times bucked the president on tariffs and foreign policy ahead of November’s pivotal midterm election. Republicans are trying to defend slim majorities in both the House and Senate.

But with two and a half years remaining in his second term, his influence on Republican electoral politics is hard to deny. A recent CBS News poll found that 63% of those surveyed disapprove of Trump’s handling of the job.

The same poll found 85% of Republicans approve of the job Trump is doing, making him influential in primary elections, where he has been doling out endorsements on Truth Social.

“I think every day in a second term you have less and less power. But he still packs considerable punch among Republican primary voters,” said John…