Thomas Massie

Massie is guilty of “too much grandstanding, too few great votes, years of acting like being difficult is the same thing as being courageous; it’s not,” Hegseth said, while delivering his usual talking points about the perils of “dudes in dresses” and “woke” policies in the military.

He even nodded to his critics at the outset. “For the lawyers,” he said, “I’m here in my personal capacity as a private citizen, a fellow American and a fellow combat veteran.”

The race is the latest stop in Trump’s campaign to exact revenge on his opponents that has already led to the defeat of most of the state lawmakers he targeted in Indiana over redistricting and delivered a death knell to Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy in Louisiana, who voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges in 2021.

Massie is both Trump’s biggest test and the race he is most invested in as he seeks to remove a longtime thorn in his side. The longtime Kentucky lawmaker has attempted to block some of the president’s biggest priorities — including the GOP’s signature tax-and-spending package last year — tried to rein in his war powers and forced the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.

That dynamic made Hegseth’s appearance even more unusual. The Hatch Act, a 1939 federal law, restricts federal government employees from using their positions to engage in political activities. But they are permitted to do so on their own time.

The Pentagon insisted Hegseth didn’t violate the law because he spoke in his personal capacity — even though he was in Kentucky for official business — and no taxpayer dollars went into this visit.

“His participation has been thoroughly vetted and cleared by lawyers, including the Department of War Office of General Counsel, and does not violate the Hatch Act or any other applicable federal statute,” Chief Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement.

Experts noted it was a fine line. “It is unusual to see the secretary of Defense campaigning not just in an election, but in the primary, and picking and campaigning against the sitting House member,” said Peter Feaver, who studies civil-military relations at Duke University, But “it’s not illegal or unethical, assuming that he followed all the procedures.”

Hegseth began his speech with some housekeeping, gently correcting Gallrein’s earlier comments that he was an Army Ranger. Hegseth served as a National Guard member but never took the Ranger qualification course to become a member of the 75th Ranger Regiment, the Army’s storied special operations unit.

“I’m not Ranger qualified,” he told the crowd, despite Gallrein twice calling him a Ranger in his own brief remarks.

Trump’s political operation and outside groups aligned with the president have spent more than $16 million trying to oust Massie. Overall spending has topped $32 million, making it the most expensive House primary on record, according to tracking firm AdImpact.

Polling shows a tightening race down to the home stretch on Tuesday, with Massie leading in one survey by just over 1 percentage point and trailing Gallrein by 8 points in another.

But Massie is a tough target. His libertarian-conservative politics mirror those of his northern Kentucky district. He has allies in some of the conservative movement’s loudest voices, like Tucker Carlson, former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who rallied with Massie over the weekend and drew a primary challenge threat from Trump over it.

And Gallrein, a first-time federal candidate who lost a state Senate bid in the southwestern corner of the district in 2024, is unknown to many voters, particularly after he skipped several forums and debates.

Trump, egged on by his growing win column, has unleashed a barrage of social media attacks against Massie in the campaign’s final days. “The worst Congressman in the long and storied history of the Republican Party, is Thomas Massie,” the president posted on social media hours ahead of Hegseth’s visit on Tuesday. “Vote him out of office tomorrow, Tuesday. It will be a great day for America!”

Massie remains optimistic.

“I’m glad he’s in with both feet,” Massie said in an interview Friday as he left the Capitol for the campaign trail. “This will be his biggest loss ever as far as endorsements go.”