You’ve probably noticed the kerfuffle between President Donald Trump and Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) by now. President Trump called on every Republican to unify and support the Continuing Resolution that passed in the House of Representatives this week. Massie voted against it. President Trump has vowed to support a primary challenger to unseat the Kentucky lawmaker in the 2026 midterms.
A lot of otherwise smart conservatives are claiming that President Trump has “failed to read the room” by feuding with Massie. Here’s what’s really going on.
On the surface, you’d think that President Trump and Massie would be ideological allies. Massie is well-liked by a lot of people. You see him doing interviews with Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter all the time and he comes across as at least a MAGA-adjacent congressman. But who is Thomas Massie really?
Some of us have been in this game a long time and remember. Thomas Massie first ran for Congress in 2012 as a Tea Party conservative. He won that race, thanks in large part to the help of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell. As soon as Massie was sworn into office, he immediately betrayed the Tea Party movement.
Mitch McConnell was one of the reasons why the Tea Party came into existence in the first place. Conservatives hated him and still do to this day. Anytime that the Republican-controlled Congress had the upper hand against the Obama White House, Mitch McConnell would sneak over to Obama’s office and cut a secret deal that screwed over Americans.
Sound familiar? McConnell has been betraying the American people for decades. He’s worse than Linsday Graham when it comes to throwing the American people under the bus for the benefit of the Democrats.
McConnell was a huge target for the Tea Party movement in 2014. The voters wanted to primary him so that we could have a chance of slowing Obama’s communist agenda down for the last two years he would be in office.
Thomas Massie repaid the Tea Party movement that got him elected by rushing to Mitch McConnell’s defense. Here was his message to the Tea Party:
“My advice to people who are frustrated with Washington is that there’s probably a better way to spend your time, effort, money, blood, sweat and tears than trying to have Senator McConnell unelected. I think there are a lot better chances and better use of your time in terms of changing Washington, D.C.”
Leave Mitch McConnell alone, you Tea Party bullies!
Let’s fast-forward to 2019. Democrats had retaken control of the House in the 2018 midterms. President Trump issued an emergency declaration to close the southern border until the border wall was completed. Thomas Massie joined the Democrats and voted to overturn that emergency order. He was the sole Republican in the House to vote against border security.
When President Trump vetoed the Democrats’ efforts to overturn his emergency declaration, Massie voted with the Democrats again. The Democrats were successful in overriding President Trump’s emergency declaration with the help of Thomas Massie, who voted against border security and against President Trump once again.
Many Trump supporters have also forgotten that Thomas Massie was part of the astroturfing operation that tried to replace President Trump with Ron DeSantis last year. A group of Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush’s financiers threw their money behind DeSantis back in 2022 when they thought that the DOJ lawfare cases against President Trump would prevail.
DeSantis aide Christina Pushaw organized the pro-DeSantis group by shepherding tons of money to conservative “influencers” to throw their support behind the Florida governor. Thomas Massie was one of the Republican House members who supported that effort because he saw it as their best chance to hijack the MAGA movement and keep Donald Trump out of the White House forever.
Massie is not a MAGA/MAHA friend. He is a Mitch McConnell protégé from Kentucky. He’s just better at hiding his butt-hurt over Donald Trump than Mitch McConnell is.
If he is such a “principled” conservative, then why do Thomas Massie’s principles always lead him to vote against President Trump at the times when it matters the most?
