{"id":47,"date":"2026-05-19T11:34:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T11:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=47"},"modified":"2026-05-19T11:34:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T11:34:34","slug":"liberals-love-him-trump-loathes-him-how-a-classic-congressional-weirdo-ended-up-at-the-center-of-american-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=47","title":{"rendered":"Liberals Love Him. Trump Loathes Him. How a Classic Congressional Weirdo Ended Up at the Center of American Politics."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

ERLANGER, Kentucky\u2014<\/strong>Bruce Spears voted for Ed Gallrein for one reason: \u201cBecause Trump told me to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Republicans Are Trying to Kill the Abortion Pill. They Don\u2019t Stand a Chance.<\/a><\/p>\n

The goateed retiree from Erlanger made clear that he had heard Gallrein speak (he was \u201cbetter than I thought he would be\u201d) and been growing skeptical of longtime incumbent Thomas Massie for a while. But the Kentucky Republican voter was a big admirer of Donald Trump (\u201che\u2019s got balls\u201d) and that was enough for him to switch from his support of Massie, whom he had backed in previous elections.<\/p>\n

Gallrein is running to unseat Massie here in a Republican primary to represent Kentucky\u2019s 4th<\/sup> District, but the challenger is basically an extension of the most powerful force in Republican politics: Trump\u2019s endorsement. And rather than a race between candidates, the primary is mostly a referendum on Trump\u2019s sway over the GOP today. With that question hanging over the ballot, the race has become the most expensive House primary in American history.<\/p>\n

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The race in northern Kentucky is hardly the only time Trump has targeted a disobedient Republican for replacement. It comes days after Sen. Bill Cassidy lost to a Trump-backed challenger in Louisiana, a half-decade delayed penance for the lawmaker\u2019s 2021 vote to convict Trump after his post\u2013Jan. 6 impeachment. And it comes weeks after Trump successfully ousted a handful of Indiana state senators who refused to accede to the president\u2019s demand for a mid-decade redistricting.<\/p>\n

But this race is different. Gallrein\u2019s sheer anonymity makes him the ultimate test for power of Trump\u2019s endorsement. The White House started a full-scale effort to recruit a primary challenger in the spring of 2025, long before the Epstein files had even become a major issue on Capitol Hill. None of their initial targets agreed to run. Eventually, they found Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL and failed state Senate candidate.<\/p>\n

Gallrein has been a negligible presence on the campaign trail. His campaign signs feature his name, but in a font almost as large they remind voters he\u2019s \u201cendorsed by President Trump.\u201d His website mostly contains b-roll for use by supportive super PACs. (Visitors to his page, before anything else, are also greeted by a pop-up that reminds them \u201cEd Gallrein Has Trump\u2019s \u2018Complete and Total Endorsement.\u2019 \u201d When the candidate does appear, he emphasizes his support for Trump. Even when asked about the controversial conflict in Iran, he hails the president\u2019s genius. In an interview with a local television station, the candidate described the president as \u201cplaying five-dimensional chess\u201d in Iran and added that Trump is \u201cresetting the entire global power structure.\u201d Often, the only traces of a Gallrein appearance are posed photos shared afterward on his campaign Facebook page, the political equivalent of tears in the rain.<\/p>\n

In almost any other matchup, Trump\u2019s condemnation would basically doom the incumbent, particularly because the primary is tightly limited to registered Republicans. Kentucky has a closed primary, and independent voters had to change their registration by New Year\u2019s Eve 2025 in order to participate. As one Republican strategist put it to Slate, \u201cIt\u2019s obviously the most fascinating primary of the entire cycle: a sitting congressman with an independent brand going head-to-head with Trump.\u201d The strategist noted that in almost any district, a sitting congressman targeted by the president would lose by 30 points.<\/p>\n

But here, while Gallrein appears the favorite, the race is tight, and Massie is by no means out of it.\u00a0Because although Trump has turned his ire on countless Republicans before, he\u2019s never targeted any Republican quite like Thomas Massie. Then again, there is no Republican quite like Thomas Massie.<\/p>\n

A congressional gadfly whose quirky libertarian politics sometime confound party lines, Massie has long been a burr under Trump\u2019s saddle. Trump has railed at times against the Kentucky Republican going back to 2020, when Massie forced an in-person vote on an overwhelmingly popular COVID response bill at the start of the pandemic. Trump labeled him a \u201cthird-rate grandstander\u201d and urged that he be \u201cthrow[n] out of the Republican Party.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since then, the relationship has ebbed and flowed. Trump even endorsed Massie\u2019s reelection bid in 2022. However, it has gone downhill in Trump\u2019s second term, starting with Massie\u2019s refusal to back Mike Johnson in the speaker\u2019s race (where Trump had to whip other recalcitrant members over the phone to finally get Johnson the gavel). Since then, Massie has repeatedly broken with Trump on other issues, including the president\u2019s signature \u201cOne Big Beautiful Bill.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the highest-profile rifts, however, is over the \u201cEpstein files,\u201d a catch-all phrase referring to information about convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who served as a conduit between powerful men and their victims. Massie has been one of the loudest House voices prodding the Trump administration to release more information on the sex offender and his accomplices. Last November, Massie, with the help of three other Republicans and every single Democrat, succeeded in pushing legislation demanding more disclosure, which was passed almost unanimously.<\/p>\n

Epstein has been a sensitive topic for Trump. The president was at least friendly with the offender, and the full extent of their relationship was, at least before the Iran war, one of the most-discussed questions in all of American politics. And while Trumpworld\u2019s disdain for Massie long predates the Epstein files as a hot button issue (the White House was recruiting primary challengers last spring), it has added more fuel to the conflict between the two.<\/p>\n

Massie\u2019s bipartisan Epstein work and his defiance of Trump have made him something of a liberal darling du jour, with pundits and elected officials on the left openly rooting for him to beat Gallrein to keep his seat. (The Gallrein campaign has been more than happy to share such endorsements with the deep-red primary electorate). Massie\u2019s fans on the left see the Kentucky libertarian as an avatar for the effort to break Trump\u2019s grip on the GOP. But implicit in that effort is a hope that, when the Republican Party sheds Trump, it\u2019ll return to something the center left finds more palatable.<\/p>\n

That hope is hollow: Unlike other Trump targets, Massie is by no means a moderate. In fact, Massie is arguably even more extreme than Gallrein, who is simply running as a generic MAGA candidate. After all, the Kentucky Republican has long indulged in antisemitic tropes\u2014such as claiming that Congress was more supportive of \u201cZionism\u201d than \u201cAmerican Patriotism.\u201d Massie is also an ardent anti-vaxxer.<\/p>\n

An up-close look at Massie, and a week with some of his most fervent supporters, reveals that if the candidate succeeds in defying Trump, it won\u2019t be a victory for anything close to the McCain-era Republican Party that establishment Democrats pine for. Instead, Massie\u2019s political fortitude suggests that any anti-Trump coalition in the Republican Party will be led by a figure less like Mitt Romney\u2014and more like Marjorie Taylor Greene.<\/p>\n

Massie and Gallrein are running in a safely Republican congressional district shaped like a bat, centered around the Cincinnati suburbs south of the Ohio River. One wing stretches west along the river toward Louisville, absorbing some of its outer suburbs. The other stretches east to the West Virginia border, taking in a slice of Appalachia. Both candidates live at the far ends of the district. Gallrein is close to Louisville in a county that features multiple distilleries and a history of Confederate guerrilla violence during the Civil War. Massie\u2019s home base is deep in Appalachia in a county that had a long history of moonshining during Prohibition and was so pro-Union in the 1860s that it has voted for a Democratic presidential candidate only once since the Civil War.<\/p>\n

The Louisville portion, where Massie has traditionally underperformed, includes voters just added to the district, further hurting his chances. To the extent that there are any country club Republicans in the district, they are there. It\u2019s a place where Gallrein needs to not only win but win by real margins.<\/p>\n

Massie should do well in his Appalachian base and turn out as many voters as possible. However, the population there is shrinking. Several counties there have smaller populations now than they did in the 19th<\/sup> century. The battleground is in metro Cincinnati. The three suburban counties of Boone, Kenton, and Campbell run in vertical slices, each taking part of the Cincinnati suburbs south of the Ohio River and running south through exurbs and eventually rural areas.<\/p>\n

This area is the one of the most traditionally Republican parts of Kentucky, filled with conservative migrants from deep-red Cincinnati who steadily moved out of the city and into blue-collar and middle-class suburbs across the river. The influence of the Queen City is ubiquitous: The fast food is Skyline Chili, not Kentucky Fried Chicken, and the Reds and Bengals are as important as the Wildcats. But, as Geoff Davis, the Republican who represented the district before Massie, described it, it is both socially and fiscally conservative. However, Davis also described the area as having \u201can independent streak that goes back to the post Revolutionary War period in Kentucky.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both candidates\u2019 styles were on full display in the final days before the election.<\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Gallrein was a ghost. Slate tried to attend one Gallrein event at a near-empty sports bar in the suburban sprawl\u2014but, per the restaurant manager\u2014the campaign sent out an email pulling the plug on the rally shortly before it was set to begin. One disappointed man with a Gallrein sticker walked out, while a lone barfly looked at a broadcast of a PGA golf tournament.<\/p>\n

Instead, much of the heavy lifting came from surrogates. Gallrein did make a major open press appearance Monday, when a Trump-allied super PAC held a campaign event at a hotel on the grounds of the Cincinnati airport. But the candidate was not the main speaker. Instead, it was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was there \u201cstrictly in his personal capacity\u201d for what was billed as \u201ca policy discussion.\u201d The discussion was Gallrein and Hegseth each giving 15 minute speeches. Both were about why Gallrein should be elected to Congress, although Hegseth\u2019s speech stayed more focused on that topic than Gallrein did.<\/p>\n

The only discussion was when Gallrein wandered into the area where reporters were seated in the back of the room where he proclaimed, \u201cWelcome to Kentucky, where we fry everything including dessert.\u201d A reporter asked him how he was feeling about the race; Gallrein asked where the reporter was from. \u201cThe New York Times\u201d came the reply. It prompted Gallrein to start berating the reporter because the New York Times had endorsed his opponent. (The paper hadn\u2019t, but it had commissioned a favorable opinion piece by a libertarian journalist about Massie, which Gallrein\u2019s campaign has repeatedly\u2014and inaccurately\u2014called an endorsement). Gallrein ended by chiding reporters: \u201cBe fair and balanced, can we do that?\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of the heavy hitting for Gallrein has come from another surrogate: the conspiracy theorist and Islamophobe Laura Loomer. The MAGA influencer has spent days promoting a last-minute surprise attack. Loomer is touting a woman who alleges that she dated Massie and that he paid her \u201chush money\u201d afterward. As the hours wound down to Election Day, the claims got increasingly sordid. Massie has denied any wrongdoing and called allegations political motivated. In a district with a significant evangelical population (there is a biblical theme park with a life-size re-creation of Noah\u2019s Ark featuring depictions of humans mingling with dinosaurs), it works to create an extra element of doubt about the incumbent among those voters wavering between their long-standing support of Massie and their allegiance to Trump. But, in a campaign that has seen roughly $30 million in spending, it\u2019s unclear just how much figures like Laura Loomer spreading rumors online will matter.<\/p>\n

Read more Trump\u2019s Efforts to Intimidate Elon Musk\u2019s Enemies Just Faced a Severe Setback<\/a><\/p>\n

If Gallrein might as well be invisible in the district and in the media, Massie is the opposite.\u00a0The\u00a0Kentucky Republican has never been press shy. In the home stretch, he\u2019s been featured in a profile in the left-wing Mother Jones and been trailed by a posse of right-wing influencers, who have descended from across the country to attend Massie\u2019s events and boost his campaign online. It is a combination that certainly appeals to those Republican primary voters with an independent streak.<\/p>\n

Massie is a throwback libertarian who, in lieu of the standard lawmaker flag pin, wears on his lapel a national debt clock that he programmed himself. In his stump speeches, the Kentucky congressman spends time focusing on the type of quirky legislative accomplishments that he was once known for, including advancing legislation to make it easier for customers to buy meat directly from farmers. In Shelbyville, Kentucky, a historic town where one can still spot a handful of log buildings in an area first settled by Daniel Boone\u2019s younger brother Squire, Massie spoke to a packed room of about 75 in a coffee shop. To the all-white crowd a block and a half from an historical marker commemorating a lynching, the Kentucky congressman went on at length about a bill he has championed to address racial discrimination against Blacks and Hispanics that has made it more likely for them to be wrongfully denied the right to buy a firearm. Massie trumpeted that his work on the topic made it one of the few pieces of pro-gun legislation to be broadly supported by Democrats.<\/p>\n

He also takes pains to note his fondness for Trump (despite Trump\u2019s obvious disdain for him). A staple of his stump speech is an impersonation of the president. To laughs, he mimics Trump calling him \u201ca sharp cookie\u201d and \u201ca tough cookie\u201d along with a trademark Trumpian meander about the president\u2019s uncle who was a longtime faculty member at Massie\u2019s alma mater of MIT. Massie spent several days before the election using Rep. Lauren Boebert\u2014a Republican from Colorado\u2014as a surrogate, hoping she could reinforce his credentials at a campaign rally, despite the president\u2019s repeated attacks on him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s really important that Lauren Boebert is here because they\u2019re trying to tell you that you can\u2019t support the president and vote for Thomas Massie,\u201d the Kentucky Republican said.
\u201cThey\u2019re trying to divide everybody, and Lauren is here to show you that is not true. There\u2019s no bigger supporter of President Trump than Lauren Boebert, but she is here supporting me as well. And when your neighbors say, \u2018Well, I support the president. I don\u2019t know if I can vote for Massie.\u2019 Let them know they can do both.\u201d<\/p>\n

In campaign ads, Massie has even tried to turn Gallrein into the Trump skeptic, citing the fact that \u201cWoke Eddie,\u201d as the incumbent labels him, changed his party registration to independent after the 2016 Republican primary.\u00a0The tagline in one Massie ad about Gallrein is \u201cNot just a Trump hater but a Trump traitor\u201d<\/p>\n

Massie\u2019s long bench of surrogates also features a bevy of local elected officials showing up to endorse him. At one event, Massie was introduced by a state senator and state representative. And he also drew ardent libertarians like Derek Wheeler, a longtime supporter from Indiana who doesn\u2019t vote in federal elections.\u00a0Wheeler, wearing a \u201cDraft Lindsey Graham\u201d T-shirt\u2014a suggestion that the ardently interventionist senator should serve on the front lines himself\u2014said: \u201cI\u2019ve always loved Massie. I\u2019m a Ron Paul supporter from long ago and he is the new iteration.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also a parade of far-right personalities showing out to offer their support. Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two people in a confrontation amid unrest in Wisconsin in 2020, was at a Massie rally on Saturday. Stewart Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his actions around the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, attended multiple Massie events but took it a step further: The Oath Keeper founder told Slatethat he was knocking on doors for the Kentucky congressman.<\/p>\n

It contains even uglier elements as well. One campaign rally was livestreamed by Alex Jones\u2019 new podcasting network from a cavernous coffee shop and tchotchke store set in a La Grange, Kentucky, strip mall just off the interstate between a church and a Dollar Tree. One prominent antisemitic influencer walked around in an American Reich T-shirt, another attendee wore an America First hat tied to far-right personality Nick Fuentes.<\/p>\n

It also brought in people like Matt, who recently moved to the area from Louisville and said that he \u201cdidn\u2019t care about politics at all, but [Massie] had inspired him to hear a little more.\u201d Matt was wearing a sweatshirt saying, \u201cDidn\u2019t Kiss the Wall, 11-22-63, America First\u201d on the front and then a picture of John F. Kennedy in photoshopped sunglasses and the \u201cDidn\u2019t Kiss the Wall\u201d phrase again on the back. It is a reference to the conspiracy theory that Israel was responsible for the assassination of Kennedy because he was not properly subservient to the Jewish state (as demonstrated by not going to the Western Wall). Matt said he found the shirt scrolling through TikTok and thought it was funny. He did add, \u201cI do believe that Israel has control over our politics.\u201d Matt later had his picture taken with Massie in that sweatshirt in a photo line after the event.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a reason why some of the right\u2019s most noxious creatures see a home for themselves in Massie\u2019s broad coalition of traditional conservatives, libertarians, and MAHA fans. He taps into the primordial isolationism within the Republican Party and Old Right resistance to the modern party that dates to the 1950s. It is a strain on the right that has long been comfortable with conspiracy theories, including antisemitic ones.<\/p>\n

While Massie\u2019s national pitch focuses on the malign influence of Israel on his election, he tends to be more restrained in the district. Often, instead, to voters, he uses more coded language about the globalist Epstein class\u2019s influence on the race and says those donors opposed to him are mad simply because he \u201cdoesn\u2019t vote for foreign aid.\u201d The one exception was when, at a campaign rally on Saturday, Massie took a shot at Gallrein\u2019s support, joking that he\u2019d been given a way to contact Gallrein for a potential concession speech.\u201cJust in case I lose, they gave me the number to call. The area code is Tel Aviv though.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, if Massie loses, a concession call might be better placed to the White House than to Gallrein. The former Navy SEAL was by no means Trumpworld\u2019s first choice to run for the seat. Instead, Gallrein simply functioned as an anthropomorphized biography. He checks the boxes as a farmer and combat veteran, and has simply been blown up as an avatar of Trump\u2019s disdain for the incumbent.<\/p>\n

As Boebert told a crowd on Saturday, \u201cThis race will set a precedent for every other race for our entire country. This race will determine the future of all other races.\u201d Needless to say, only hours after she made those remarks, Trump called for a primary challenge against her online. After all, if Trump\u2019s endorsement, and the financial resources allied to it, can take down an incumbent as entrenched as Massie, it leaves almost every Republican in Congress vulnerable.<\/p>\n

And that seems to be the case.<\/p>\n

At an early voting location in Erlanger, inside a Catholic church hall set among late 20th<\/sup>-century suburban sprawl, those who showed up midafternoon on a weekday to cast their Republican primary ballot were almost invariably pro-Gallrein.<\/p>\n

With the exception of one voter who thought the Jews were evil, Trump was being blackmailed by Benjamin Netanyahu, and the CIA was spreading diseased ticks across the country, there was no support for Massie. (The voter in question declined to give his name, saying he wanted to stay under the radar, noting what he described as the connection of the Antichrist to flock cameras.)<\/p>\n

Steve Hicks said he was a Trump supporter but not a diehard. \u201cI don\u2019t wear Trump merchandise, you know, have an altar at home to him or anything,\u201d he said. For Hicks, Massie had lost his support with the votes that he had taken against the Republican agenda in Congress. \u201cHe\u2019s not supposed to vote his principles. He\u2019s supposed to vote for his supporters\u2019 principles, and he\u2019s getting off base with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others shared the sense that Massie had gone off track. Chris Fields of Erlanger shared her dismay that the six-term congressman was not voting with his party. \u201cHe\u2019s Republican or slash libertarian, but he\u2019s been voting with the Democrats, and so I don\u2019t like that.\u201d She also echoed anti-Massie campaign ads noting that the incumbent violated a term limits pledge that he took when he was first elected.<\/p>\n

Mimi High of Erlanger just simply expressed her disappointment that Massie \u201cwas not who we thought he was.\u201d<\/p>\n

Massie himself gibed to Slateon Saturdaythat no one is actually voting for Gallrein because almost no one in the district knows him. \u201cHe won\u2019t show up to a debate, he\u2019s not doing large rallies. \u2026 He\u2019s trying to avoid any hard questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, the Kentucky Republican said, \u201cthis is a referendum. People are either going to go vote for me or they\u2019re going to go vote against me.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cI think the other X factor is this: You can get inspired to vote for somebody like you saw at this rally today, but you don\u2019t have an anti-Massie rally, where voters say, \u2018Boo, take him out, let\u2019s get some pitchforks and go to the polling locations.\u2019 That energy doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n

The problem for Massie may be that while Republican primary voters in his district don\u2019t hate him, they just love Donald Trump more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Read more Is the Supreme Court\u2019s Abortion Pill Ruling Actually a Feint?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Epstein files, a MAGA civil war, and an alleged sex scandaled have turbocharged a House race.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[63,13,62,51],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-2026-midterms","tag-elections","tag-kentucky","tag-republicans"],"yoast_head":"\nLiberals Love Him. Trump Loathes Him. How a Classic Congressional Weirdo Ended Up at the Center of American Politics. - Home Move Chronicle<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/homemovechronicle.com\/?p=47\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Liberals Love Him. Trump Loathes Him. 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