Thomas Massie

The state of Kentucky is famed for its genteel manners and Southern hospitality, a place where the mint julep cocktails come with a “yes, ma’am” and a “much obliged” at Churchill Downs racecourse on derby day.

President Trump, however, feels a less polite form of address is appropriate to describe Thomas Massie, one of the state’s representatives in Congress and arguably the most rebellious Republican voice left on Capitol Hill.

“Vote the bum out on Tuesday,” Trump posted on Truth Social this weekend.

The insults that the president has thrown at the representative for Kentucky’s 4th congressional district — Trump has called Massie a “major sleazebag”, a “moron” and the “Worst Republican Congressman in History” — reflect the outsized importance that the maverick congressman’s battle to hold on to his seat, which covers the suburbs of Louisville and Cincinnati, has assumed in American politics.

The race is widely viewed as a test of Trump’s decade-long grip on the Republican party, and the president has instructed his supporters to vote for Ed Gallrein, an ex-Navy Seal. Over $32 million has been spent on advertising, making it the one of the most expensive primary races in House history.

The polling suggests the two Republicans are neck-and-neck. Gallrein has an eight-point lead over Massie, according to a poll last week by Quantus Insights of 908 likely Republican voters. Massie had a five-point lead over Gallrein when Big Data Poll asked 518 likely voters last month. The most recent poll by Neighborhood Research and Media had the two candidates tied on 39 points after surveying 291 Kentucky Republicans.

An MIT engineering graduate who lives off-grid in a house powered by a Tesla battery, Massie, 55, conforms to the Kentucky stereotype of an eccentric tinkerer and farmer — one of the state’s most famous sons is the 19th century inventor Nathan Stubblefield, a melon-grower who invented wireless telephones in his spare time — and he is unique among Republican congressmen for demonstrating a fiercely independent streak, refusing to bow to pressure from Trump over a range of issues.

Alarmed by America’s ballooning debt, Massie voted against Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill last year, saying he retained the fiscally conservative beliefs that others in his party had abandoned, merely to satisfy the president’s demands for tax cuts.

The real rift with Trump opened up, however, when the Kentucky congressman began agitating for the release of the Epstein files last year.

By teaming up with Ro Khanna, a Democratic congressman from California, Massie used procedural rules to force the administration to publish millions of documents from the FBI investigation into the paedophile financier.

Redistricting map 2026: tracking the new congressional districts

Given the Republicans’ slim majority in the House of Representatives, Massie’s small rebellion was enough to defeat the White House. After publication of the files, he maintained his pressure on the Trump administration, demanding that the Department of Justice punish Epstein’s associates. “When will we see justice?” Massie said in a fiery speech on the House floor this year.

An isolationist on foreign policy matters, he has emerged as one of the most vehement critics of Trump’s war in Iran and is part of a growing number of Republicans willing to openly question the nature of America’s relationship with Israel.

The spending in the Kentucky Republican primary has been dominated by pro-Israel donors, including the billionaires Paul Singer, Miriam Adelson and John Paulson. Massie has branded the race a “referendum” on American support for Israel. “A coalition of Israel’s lobbyists and donors is spending tens of millions of dollars in a blatant attempt to buy a KY congressional seat,” he said on X.

Massie has won the backing of renegade followers of the Make America Great Again movement, including the prominent Israel critics Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Joe Kent, the ex-CIA officer who resigned from his job as a senior White House national security aide this year because of his opposition to Trump’s decision to attack Iran.

Massie was accused by Chuck Schumer, the Democratic senator, of sharing antisemitic material, after he posted a popular Drake meme in 2023 showing the rapper turning away from “American patriotism,” while smiling at “Zionism,” with the caption “Congress these days”. Massie has denied allegations of antisemitism and said that his criticism of Israel is legitimate.

TJ Litafik, a veteran Republican political consultant in Kentucky, said voters had received “staggering amounts of mail, digital media, TV commercials and canvassing”. He said: “The 4th district is a very unique animal. It’s not the state as a whole. It’s the heart of the so-called Liberty movement in Kentucky and Massie has a very unique individualised brand that’s fairly significant for a congressman. I would say Massie’s got more of a personal identity with voters in his district than the average member of Congress.

“A lot of people that I’ve talked to in that congressional district, they’ve put up with Massie’s maverick status, his brand of Liberty politics. But then he crossed some lines in recent years and, at least amongst a lot of Republican loyalists, they feel that it’s time to go in a different direction.”

In a state that broke for Trump by 31 points in 2024, Massie says he votes with the Republicans around 91 per cent of the time, and has defied the president on only a handful of issues. “Well, the 9 per cent that he has chosen to make his stand on are issues that have very much been at a marquee level that have really been big fights that Trump has been personally invested in,” said Litafik.

Recent contests bode ill for Massie. A group of Indiana Republicans who dared to oppose Trump’s redistricting drive were ousted as state senators this month. Over the weekend, Bill Cassidy, the senator for Louisiana, was defeated in a Republican primary after Trump backed Julia Letlow, his challenger, as retribution for the 68-year-old doctor voting in favour of Trump’s conviction for the January 6 insurrection.

If Massie survives, however, more Republican congressmen may question the wisdom of allying themselves so closely with Trump ahead of November’s midterms given the president’s low approval ratings.

Trump has shared posts from his supporters digging into Massie’s personal life, having himself questioned the Kentucky congressman’s decision to remarry just over a year after his first wife died in 2024.

Massie hit back in an interview with Carlson, saying Trump “dishonoured my late wife, dishonoured me, and dishonoured my current wife”. But the president has offered little sympathy and instead redoubled his attacks.

“Kentucky, get this LOSER out of politics in Tuesday’s Election,” he said in another Truth Social post on Sunday.