President Donald Trump and his top political advisers are plotting an aggressive push to oust one of his most persistent Republican adversaries: Rep. Thomas Massie.
And House GOP leaders won’t stand in Trump’s way.
Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team are sending their clearest signals to date that their conservative colleague will have to fend for himself as Trump’s allies prepare to dump millions into Massie’s district to purge him from the Northeastern Kentucky district he’s represented for nearly 13 years. In interviews with CNN, five members of House GOP leadership declined to offer their backing for Massie’s reelection bid – and Johnson would not say if he’d support his colleague.
Instead, the speaker admonished Massie for undercutting his party’s agenda – as the libertarian-minded Republican intensifies his furious battle to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and derides Trump’s signature domestic policy achievement for driving up the national debt.
“He is actively working against his team almost daily now and seems to enjoy that role. So he is, you know, deciding his own fate,” Johnson told CNN, delivering a firm message that party leaders would not intervene to protect Massie in the escalating feud with Trump.
While Johnson said his job is to “lead the incumbent protection program,” the speaker chided Massie for waging “unfounded attacks” against him. And he added: “My way is to reach out an olive branch to everybody and be a peacemaker. And some people make that very difficult for me.”
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson talks to reporters after a closed-door meeting with Jeffrey Epstein abuse victims at the US Capitol on Tuesday. – J. Scott Applewhite/AP
The lack of support among House GOP leaders is a reflection of months of mounting frustration with the Kentucky Republican as he’s personally antagonized both the speaker and president in a series of fights – most recently in trying to force a vote on a bill to release the Epstein files over intense opposition from Johnson and the White House. Massie needs the support of just five other Republicans – along with all Democrats – to put the bill on the floor, but he remains two GOP signatures short.
Trump and his team are still searching for a candidate who can go toe-to-toe with the 54-year-old Massie, who has burnished a brand of a party maverick not afraid to break from his leadership and the president of his own party – namely on issues of government spending and budget deficits. But Trump views Massie as a deeply disloyal actor in a party where he demands unflinching support.
Trump has met with state Sen. Aaron Reed, who has privately expressed interest in a primary challenge against Massie, according to three sources familiar with the meeting from earlier this summer. But Trump still has yet to signal he’d endorse Reed, a former Navy SEAL who is staunchly conservative, as the presiden’ts team is weighing other potential challengers ahead of the January 9 candidate filing deadline, according to the sources. (Reed did not respond to requests for comment.)
But Trump allies fully expect the president to put his muscle behind a candidate after his outside group pummels Massie with millions in attack ads.
In an interview, Massie brushed off the attacks and voiced confidence in his reelection chances. He pushed back on the criticism from the speaker as he defended his push for the government’s files on Epstein’s sex trafficking case, citing broad support based on public opinion polls. And he claimed that Trump was trying to spare some of his allies and donors from “embarrassment” by shielding the files.
“The speaker’s position depends on him rubber stamping, not just rubber stamping, but reinforcing anything Donald Trump wants, even if Donald Trump is wrong,” Massie said. “So the speaker’s in a tough spot.”
He added: “I don’t see that I’m making their life hard at all, unless they think it’s hard, because they’re going to have to take a vote to put them on record. If that’s hard, I’m sorry, that’s your job.”
Trump and his political advisers are girding for a blockbuster primary fight next year. A pro-Trump super PAC called “MAGA Kentucky” has reserved $1.6 million in ads this summer, according to AdImpact data reviewed by CNN. The group is being led by Chris LaCivita, Trump’s 2024 campaign co-manager, and pollster Tony Fabrizio.
And there could be a lot more anti-Massie money to come. Pro-Israel groups like AIPAC also plan to spend big to oust Massie, who has a long history of voting against US support for Israel, according to a person familiar with the plans.
With the May primary still months away, Massie has yet to spend much on air, having spent just $418,000 on ads this year. Whether he gets some outside help – including from the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, who posted on X in June that he’d help Massie as he was railing against Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act – remains to be seen.
In his more than a dozen years in Congress, Massie has never been a leadership loyalist, opposing plenty of party priorities on the floor under several GOP speakers – and even unsuccessfully sought to oust Johnson from the speakership last year.
But his standing within the party has shifted recently, and many Republicans privately argue that he has become more of an agitator to Trump and leadership, according to multiple lawmakers and senior aides. He retains staunch support from fellow conservatives like Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who also voted against Trump’s megabill earlier this year.
“I’m a big supporter of Thomas Massie,” Paul told reporters in July, according to the Louisville Courier Journal. “He’s a man of principle who votes against the deficit like I do, whether it’s Republicans proposing spending or Democrats.”
Within the House GOP, Massie has won over some key Trump allies like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who is forcefully backing his push to release the Epstein files and has personally spoken to the president about the importance of the matter.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene speaks during a press conference to discuss the Epstein Files Transparency Act on Wednesday. – Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
Even so, other GOP colleagues working with Massie on the Epstein push said they wished he’d taken a different approach with Trump.
“I will tell you that I like Thomas on a lot of positions,” said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, a Florida Republican who has long demanded the Epstein files be released but has yet to sign onto Massie’s push to force a vote in defiance of the White House. “But I think that the way that this has kind of flushed out between his personal relationship with the president is unfortunate to see unfold.”
Luna declined to say whether she’d back Massie’s reelection.
“There’s a way that you can debate and disagree with people, but the moment that you get personal and the moment that you start doing things for reasons other than what you’re telling the public, I think that kind of crosses the Rubicon,” Luna said. “There’s no turning back from that.”
Rep. Jeff Van Drew, a New Jersey Republican who has supported Massie’s bill but said he will not go against his own leadership to force a floor vote, said he wished his colleague had made it a “less confrontational” issue.
“I didn’t make that choice. He did,” Van Drew said. “He has chosen his bed. Now he’s gotta lie in it.”
Massie has fended off every previous challenger in his district, a fiercely independent, deeply conservative stretch of Northeastern Kentucky that is known to local political operatives as the “Wild West” of the state. It’s also an extremely expensive district for anyone running for office: It’s split into four media markets in three different states. Still, senior Republicans believe Massie could be vulnerable given the right candidate.
“I would not underestimate the president’s grip on the base,” said one senior House GOP lawmaker, speaking on condition of anonymity to freely discuss a colleague’s political future. But the member said they still need a Republican there who can win: “That’s a problem. The candidate matters. Ultimately, it’s not a plebiscite. It’s an election, right? It’s not – do you like this person or not?”
Massie vs. MAGA
Rep. Thomas Massie, center, stands among lawmakers ahead of President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress in March. – Win McNamee/Pool/Reuters/File
Massie would not be the first Republican targeted for defeat by Trump. Last March, then-Rep. Bob Good of Virginia was ousted in an ugly primary after sparring with GOP leadership and backing Trump’s opponent, Ron DeSantis, in the 2024 presidential primary.
Some Republicans believe the Massie vs. MAGA primary will be even nastier, given the Kentucky congressman’s repeated votes against Trump priorities — including his signature tax and spending cuts bill — and his disparagement over Trump’s handling of Epstein.
On the leadership level, top Republicans are typically reticent to publicly criticize their own members. But some, like House GOP Conference Chair Lisa McClain, struck a note of disappointment about Massie’s rogue push to defy Johnson over the Epstein vote.
“He’s challenged us, and disagreement is not disloyalty. … But at the end of the day, when we decide to call a play, we’ve got to run the play the coach calls,” McClain said.
As for his reelection, McClain said leadership tends not to get involved in primaries and stressed she simply wants to keep the GOP majority.
“Whoever is going to stay in that seat and keep that majority, that’s what I want, right?” McClain said. “If Thomas Massie is the best person to do that, then absolutely, I want him to do that, right? I also think it’s up to his voters to decide, not necessarily for me.”
House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, the No. 3 Republican, said it was up to Massie to figure out his own reelection bid.
“I work with every single member of our team,” Emmer told CNN when asked about how party leaders would handle the White House’s efforts to oust Massie. “I have to work through their relationships with each other. I have to work through their relationships with their constituents. I leave all of our members to take care of their own business, both in the policy arena and in the campaign.”
Rep. Richard Hudson, the House GOP’s campaign chief, signaled he was staying away from the internal feud as well.
“My focus is on beating Democrats,” Hudson said. “I don’t get involved in primaries.”
Asked about GOP leaders’ views about his race, Massie shrugged it off.
“I thought about this yesterday in our press conference with the survivors,” Massie said, referring to an emotional, 90-minute event where nearly a dozen women spoke about how Epstein abused them when they were children. “My life is difficult in a political sense, but they’re living a nightmare of shame. I think it’s kind of petty for me to complain about some political race that I have to be in when there are other people who are making much greater sacrifices.”
CNN’s Steve Contorno, Alison Main, David Wright and Casey Riddle contributed to this report.
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