Trump endorses Massie challenger not yet in the primary race

President Donald Trump has endorsed a primary challenger to Rep. Thomas Massie. Now he just needs Ed Gallrein to get into the race.

Trump gave Gallrein his full-throated support in a Truth Social post Friday evening, applauding the former Navy SEAL for his service and saying “he will fight tirelessly” on a host of issues including border security and crime.

“I hope Ed gets into the Race against Massie,” Trump wrote. “Unlike ‘lightweight’ Massie, a totally ineffective LOSER who has failed us so badly, CAPTAIN ED GALLREIN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN. Should he decide to challenge Massie, Captain Ed Gallrein has my Complete and Total Endorsement. RUN, ED, RUN.”

Gallrein ran unsuccessfully for state Senate last year, narrowly losing in the GOP primary. The winner of that race, fellow Navy SEAL and now-state Sen. Aaron Reed, was also vetted by Trump and his team as a possible challenger to Massie. Reed visited the White House over the summer, but Trump did not come away from the meeting totally sold on him. Some Republicans are pushing for former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who’s currently running to succeed retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell, to drop that bid and enter the primary against Massie.

Massie, in response to Trump’s endorsement, called Gallrein a “failed candidate and establishment hack.”

“After having been rejected by every elected official in the 4th District, Trump’s consultants clearly pushed the panic button with their choice of failed candidate and establishment hack Ed Gallrein,” Massie told POLITICO. “Ed’s been begging them to pick him for over three months now.”

Trump’s endorsement of Gallrein — which included a photo of himself and Gallrein holding red MAGA hats in the Oval Office — comes as the president has been publicly teasing his plans to help unseat Massie for months. Two of his top political hands launched a super PAC, MAGA KY, that has already spent $1.8 million trying to take Massie down.

The president initially targeted the six-term congressmember over his opposition to the GOP megalaw that’s been the president’s crowning achievement on Capitol Hill this year.

“I don’t think Thomas Massie understands government. I think he’s a grandstander,” Trump told reporters at the Capitol before a key megabill vote in May. “I think he should be voted out of office.”

But Trump’s effort to oust the Kentucky Republican is coming to a head just as Massie is poised to clinch 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.

White House officials and senior House Republicans have for weeks pushed a quiet pressure campaign to try to get three female House Republicans to remove their names from Massie’s discharge petition, depriving him of the required signatures.

Massie is relishing the fight with Trump, using the president’s threats to boost fundraising for his reelection bid. He hauled in $768,000 from July through September — the best fundraising quarter of his career, according to a Federal Election Commission filing posted this week.