Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie has officially drawn a Donald Trump-backed challenger.
Ed Gallrein, who preemptively earned the president’s endorsement last week, launched his campaign Tuesday to oust the seven-term lawmaker Trump began targeting earlier this year over Massie’s opposition to Republicans’ megalaw.
“This district is Trump Country. The President doesn’t need obstacles in Congress — he needs backup,” Gallrein said in a statement. “I’ll defeat Thomas Massie, stand shoulder to shoulder with President Trump, and deliver the America First results Kentuckians voted for.”
Trump hailed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL captain who ran unsuccessfully for state Senate last year, as a “WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN” in a Truth Social post last week. He also said Massie “must be thrown out of office, ASAP.”
Massie is dismissing Gallrein as a threat, casting his opponent to POLITICO last week as a “failed candidate and establishment hack.” He later took to X to post vote totals showing he outran Gallrein in the counties they overlapped last year. And he recently posted the biggest fundraising quarter of his career, hauling in $768,000 from July to September and entering October with more than $2 million in cash on hand.
The president has been searching for a challenger to Massie since the Kentuckian voted against the “big, beautiful bill.” Trump’s political operation launched a super PAC aimed at unseating Massie in June, as the representative pushed to reassert congressional authority over Trump’s military actions in Iran. The group, MAGA KY, has spent $1.8 million on independent expenditures so far.
Trump’s effort is coming to a head just as Massie is poised to secure the required 218 signatures to end-run Speaker Mike Johnson and force a floor vote on compelling release of the Justice Department’s entire file on the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump and his team also vetted state Sen. Aaron Reed, who narrowly defeated Gallrein in the GOP primary for that seat last year. Some Republicans had hoped former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron would drop his bid to replace retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell and enter the race against Massie instead.
Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.
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