President Trump railed against Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) on social media Tuesday after the libertarian lawmaker shrugged off the president’s latest call to unseat him in his next primary election.
“Third Rate Congressman Thomas Massie, of the Great Commonwealth of Kentucky, a phenomenal State that I won all three times (by a lot!), keeps talking about how he is going to protect the Constitution, but he is actually very bad for the Constitution, and will probably vote against ‘THE GREAT, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL,’” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social Tuesday morning.
Trump touted provisions in his agenda-setting “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” — which the Kentucky lawmaker voted against last month when it narrowly passed the House and which the Senate is now considering. The House would need to vote again on the legislation to approve any changes made by the upper chamber.
“Why would anyone want to vote for a so-called ‘Congressman,’ a RINO, at best, who wants to raise your Taxes by 68 [percent], which is what will happen if, ‘THE GREAT, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL’ doesn’t pass,” Trump added in his social media post — a likely reference to the nearly two-thirds of U.S. households that could face a tax increase if 2017 tax provisions expire this year. Those tax increases would be closer to 7.5 percent, on average, according to tax policy analysts.
“He votes, ‘NO!’ on everything, because he thinks it makes him cool, but he’s not cool, he’s a LOSER!” Trump added.
Trump and Massie have been feuding over the president’s policy bill, which the Kentucky Republican has criticized over projections that it would add trillions to the national debt over the next decade.
But the Kentucky Republican has also lobbed criticism at the president in recent days for failing to seek congressional authorization before ordering airstrikes on Iranian nuclear facilities on Saturday.
Massie called the move unconstitutional, prompting Trump to call for the lawmaker’s ouster.
“MAGA should drop this pathetic LOSER, Tom Massie, like the plague!” the president wrote Sunday in a post on Truth Social. “The good news is that we will have a wonderful American Patriot running against him in the Republican Primary, and I’ll be out in Kentucky campaigning really hard.”
“MAGA is not about lazy, grandstanding, nonproductive politicians, of which Thomas Massie is definitely one,” he added.
In an interview Monday with MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes,” Massie brushed off the president’s attacks, saying, “In some sense, I have the Trump antibodies.”
“There are a few people here who are consistent and don’t sway in the wind when it’s your president or somebody else’s president, and I’m just trying to be consistent here in this case,” Massie added.
On the bill, Massie said he’s trying to stay true to his beliefs.
“I’m more of an ideologue than a populist, I’ll admit that, but at least if you’re an ideologue, you know what your ideas are, and with populism, you can blow in the wind,” he told Hayes. “I’m worried that in the first six months here, we’ve already sort of gone astray of what was one of the basic principles of putting America first.”
The congressman, a libertarian-leaning engineer and inventor, wears a digital badge that constantly keeps track of the federal debt in real time, but he recently joked on social media that he should reprogram it “to display the number of milliseconds that have elapsed since [Trump] has tweeted at me last.”
Trump’s team has reportedly been mulling potential challengers for Massie, who was first elected in 2012 and is seeking a seventh term next fall.
He easily won reelection last year, fending off two primary challengers in Kentucky’s ruby red 4th Congressional district.
The GOP lawmaker also faced MAGA world backlash near the end of the president’s first term in 2020 after he opposed the sweeping COVID-19 aid package early in the pandemic. Trump ultimately endorsed Massie in 2022.
