Q&A: Rep. Thomas Massie on ‘living rent-free’ in Trump’s head, Iran and GOP primary
Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie’s opposition to President Donald Trump’s strikes against Iranian nuclear sites has left him on something of an island among his Republican colleagues in Washington.
It’s also made him significantly more famous, attracted thousands in campaign donations, and resulted in the most serious threat against Massie’s political career yet from Trump himself.
The president, in a lengthy post to social media Sunday, called him “weak” and “ineffective.”
“Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky is not MAGA, even though he likes to say he is,” Trump posted. “Actually, MAGA doesn’t want him, doesn’t know him, and doesn’t respect him.”
Massie recently filed a war powers resolution in an attempt to block the U.S. from involvement in a war that had at first involved only Iran and Israel.
The administration went ahead Saturday and bombed three Iranian nuclear development sites, attacks that elicited Iranian retaliation Monday in the form of missiles fired at a U.S. military base in Qatar. Late Monday, Trump claimed that a ceasefire had been brokered between all parties.
The spat between Trump and Massie is just the latest in a long history of conflict between the two.
Massie has held his Northern Kentucky-centric congressional office since winning office in 2012, but the increased severity of the comments from Trump has many in Kentucky and Washington wondering: Could a Trump-endorsed candidate beat Massie in a GOP primary?
Massie thinks not.
“If I were running against Donald Trump, I’d be in trouble. It’d be a fair fight and he might even have the upper hand,” Massie said. “The thing is, I’m not running against Donald Trump, and Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump aren’t moving to the district I’m running (in).
“I’m going to be running against somebody nobody’s ever heard of, and I’ve got enough name ID and brand right now that somebody’s gonna have to work really hard to erode that.”
The congressman shared his increasing concern about the war in Iran, the state of the Republican party and more in a wide-ranging interview with the Herald-Leader Monday afternoon, saying history won’t “look kindly on Donald Trump for doing this.”
He also revealed the substance of his interaction with Trump during a recent meeting of the House Republican caucus, where he claims Trump went on a long rant about the superiority of his genetics versus Massie’s.
Hours after Massie spoke with the Herald-Leader, Trump declared that a ceasefire deal had been reached. As of Monday evening, Iranian officials said that no such deal had been struck “as of now.”
The following interview was lightly edited for length and clarity:
H-L: We’re talking now as Iran is retaliating against the US with strikes targeted at a military base in Qatar. What’s your response? What are you thinking in this moment?
TM: Well, it was never really Trump’s decision as to whether this was going to be a limited engagement. It was always Iran’s. It depended on their response. And I guess the good news here is even if they’re somehow able to stifle my war powers resolution — which might get a vote as early as July 14 — the War Powers Act that everybody is citing as the authority for Trump to carry out the initial attack requires him to withdraw from all hostilities within 60 days if he doesn’t get a positive vote from Congress. So, the irony of this is he’s likely to be back at Congress asking for a vote in the next couple months.
H-L: Is there anything about this situation that could change, within reason, that would get you to a yes vote or to support further engagement in Iran?
TM: No, the longer this goes on, the more I’ll be opposed to it. You know, there’s a big contingency within Trump’s coalition that were on board because he didn’t start a new war in his last presidency, and we were under the impression he wouldn’t start a war under his second presidency, and I would include in that coalition (Vice President) JD Vance and (Director of National Intelligence) Tulsi Gabbard, who obviously now have jobs to do and can’t be as vocal as they would be otherwise. There’s a big coalition here. I think he’s cleaving right down the middle the base that got him elected.
H-L: I’ve heard you make those comments before about growing anti-interventionist strain within the party. If it is such a big strain, why are you on an island right now as the only person taking a strong stand against this within the party? Is everyone else just afraid of pushback from the president?
TM: I think they’re afraid of pushback from the president, and I think they’re afraid of AIPAC (American-Israel Public Affairs Committee). You know, as we shop my war powers resolution for co-sponsors, my staff hears from other staff that the other members are concerned about upsetting AIPAC. I would point out there is one outlier to to your observation, and that’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is all-in opposing the war with Iran.
H-L: This isn’t the first time you’ve been opposed to the president in a high-profile manner, and you’ve said in previous iterations of the conflict that it would ‘blow over.’ Do you still think this feud between you and Trump will blow over?
TM: I think the difference now is there are people who think they can make money on the feud. Allegedly, two of his campaign people are going to work for a super PAC to try to take me out. If they can find donors for that effort, I’m sure they’ll find somebody who will run for Congress and convince them to do it, but it’s going to be an uphill battle for that person. These aren’t exact numbers, but the last poll we did, my (favorable/unfavorable) in the district was like 62-12. They have to change a lot of minds and/or get a lot of people to vote that don’t normally vote, and they’re trying to do that in a midterm when people are going to be even more disengaged.
H-L: Speaking of polling, you probably saw the one they put out that said 52% would support a Trump-backed candidate that wasn’t you versus 23% that support you. What do you make of that?
TM: That’s a poll that is commissioned to talk somebody into running against me, and we have screenshots of what we think is the same poll. What they do is they ask, “would you vote for Massie and would you vote for somebody running against him?” Then they run this whole battery of negative information and they ask the question again. Unless they show you the poll and all the questions on it, I think you should take it with a grain of salt. My advice to anybody who’s thinking about running, especially if they’re going to spend six months or a year of their life and some of their own money, is to go out and pay for their own poll before they let somebody talk them into running based on that poll, because the 52-23 is very far off of any poll we’ve ever done.
H-L: It’s not a small thing to rail against the president. He’s the de facto leader of your party and this is arguably his biggest moment yet. Why pick this fight now?
TM: I don’t pick the fights. The fights pick me. I have been consistently, since the day I got here, against more war in the Middle East. This is a flip-flop on the part of President Trump. I’m staying the course, and he’s done a 180.
H-L: Do you agree or disagree that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon?
I don’t want Iran to have a nuclear weapon, but I don’t think you can go around and bomb everybody that’s developing a capability you don’t like. I mean, the message to Iran now, and especially after Libya, is if you don’t get a nuclear weapon, you will get bombed at some point, and any country who has a nuclear weapon is not going to get bombed. I think it increases the appetite of these countries that have the industrial means to develop a weapon to do so, and we’re going to be chasing our tails.
In five years, you’re probably going to be able to type into AI, particularly one that’s not regulated, “What’s the easiest way to build a nuclear weapon given the facilities that I have” and it will give you an answer better than any team of engineers could give you. Does that mean we can start bombing anybody who has AI because it brings the time to develop a nuclear weapon down from five years to five months? it’s just it’s not a sustainable foreign policy to bomb everybody that has military capabilities that you don’t approve of.
H-L: Should the U.S. then just accept it as an inevitability that most countries with resources will have a nuke in the near future?
TM: It’s an inevitability that there will be countries who can be six months away from a nuclear weapon just simply by being first-world countries. More and more countries are going to be able to threaten us, and in response to that we should be strengthening, for instance, our own missile defense systems or our own borders.
H-L: Whatever side of this that you’re on, I think everybody would agree that right now is an historic moment. How do you think history will see your actions?
TM: I don’t think history is going to look kindly on Donald Trump for doing this. I don’t know that history will remember me.
It didn’t work out, historically, for George Bush to lose 4,492 soldiers in Iraq, and I think that’s what Trump is flirting with here, which is absolutely ruining his legacy and tying himself up so much that he can’t get things done domestically.
H-L: Who do you think will run against you? What do you make of the two names — (state Rep.) Kim Moser and (state Sen.) Aaron Reed — that have been floating around?
TM: I think if I were recruiting somebody to run against me, I would look for somebody who doesn’t have a voting record. If you want to beat a politician, you should run somebody against him who’s not one. There’s already somebody in the race, by the way, and they’re going to have to try to talk that person out of the race, I guess. I guarantee it’s not the one they want.
(Niki Lee Ethington, a registered nurse from Taylorsville, filed paperwork to run against Massie as a Republican in March of this year.)
H-L: What about your situation?
TM: Just looking at my own situation right now, almost every cycle, I go into the cycle with only $200,000 in the bank. Then if I get a real race, I have to raise a million. On our last finance report, I had like $1.3 million, and we’ve, we’ve raised $100,000 in the last 24 hours. Every time Trump attacks me, we’ve raised $100,000, $50,000 – we raised $370,000 earlier this year, inside of a week. The problem is that he gives oxygen to me when he attacks me.
I’ve posted everything he’s said about me, because, this is his problem: He gives me more status every time he attacks me. Dogs don’t bark at parked cars. You can’t say at the same time that I’m irrelevant to the discussion in Washington, D.C., and then acknowledge that I’m living rent-free in the president’s head.
He told our conference, in front of 200 other congressmen, he said something like this: He goes “Is Massie here?” and I raised my hand, and he said, “You know the thing about Massie, he’s very much like (Sen.) Rand Paul. You can never get him to vote for anything. They’re both from Kentucky, and they have the same hair.” And then he goes, “Actually, I like Massie’s hair better.”
And then he goes into this thing about MIT. He said, “You know, my uncle — it’s in front of 200 Republicans — my uncle was Professor John G. Trump. He went to MIT. He was there 41 years – it’s a record I’ve got. And you know, I went to Wharton, which is the hardest school to get into, and so my genetics are better than Tom Massie’s.” He spent 15 minutes of his hour-and-a-half speech, it felt like, speaking about me in front of our entire conference. I think what annoys him is what I say is true, and I’m not wavering, and he can’t bully me. He’s been able to bully just about everybody here.
H-L: So what’s he doing then?
TM: His motivations are different from the consultants who are going to make money on this race, but what he’s doing by attacking me is keeping the other horses in the barn. He knows I’m not going to change my position. It’s a warning shot. Just take the first horse that gets out of the barn, give it a flogging and let the other horses watch. This is like the warden at the prison: The first inmate goes over the wall, you beat the crap out of him. The problem is he hasn’t caught this inmate yet.
H-L: Let’s say Trump really does follow through on his threat to go to the district and really rally around a single candidate. Do you think, honestly, that your brand is stronger than Trump’s in the district?
TM: I mean, we know the numbers on this. We know them down to a percent. He’s got more name ID, obviously. He’s got 99% name ID, and the other 1% of respondents made a mistake on the poll. Mine is, like, probably mid-70s name ID, which is really high for a U.S. congressman, and we’re talking about Republican primary voters.
If I were running against Donald Trump, I’d be in trouble. It’d be a fair fight and he might even have the upper hand. The thing is, I’m not running against Donald Trump, and Donald Trump, Jr. and Eric Trump aren’t moving to the district I’m running (in). I’m going to be running against somebody nobody’s ever heard of, and I’ve got enough name ID and brand right now that somebody’s gonna have to work really hard to erode that.
H-L: The PAC circling the race is claiming they’ll spend “whatever it takes.” Do you think you can withstand a huge spend?
TM: A Trump endorsement can dry up all the money for most candidates, but guess what? That ain’t working on me. He’s increased my notoriety and people appreciate it, even people who support Donald Trump. This gets to your question about whose brand is better. There are people who love Donald Trump and who love me, even though he’s attacking me and I’ve got a fundraising base of thousands of donors nationally who don’t give two wits if Donald Trump endorsed me. In fact, some of them would give me more money if Donald Trump’s on the other side.
If I could sit down and have coffee with the person they recruit to run against me, I would tell them two things: one, “Please do your own poll before they drag you and your family through this for a year.” Number two would be, “You do realize I can raise millions of dollars? Like, there will be super PACs for me.” The third thing would be, “Go talk to the last three people who tried it,” because I think in those cases, sometimes what happens is the promised support and things that never materialized.
H-L: What about $20 million?
TM: At $20 million, there’s a sanity question here. Who’s going to spend $20 million when you’re looking at midterms, where $20 million could mean the difference between a majority and not a majority? Trump gets impeached in the instance of not a majority. I would say this: If each side spends $10 million, or if one side spends $10 million and the other side spends $20 million, you’re saturating the airwaves. You’re on Hulu and the Disney Channel at that point. It’s hard to move the needle with the next $10 million.
I don’t know if I could raise $20 million, but I could win if somebody spends $20 million and I spend $10 million.
H-L: Win or lose, your notoriety has increased tremendously over the last week, let alone year, let alone five years. Are there any other offices that interest you right now? Any chance you’ll be on the ballot for, say, governor in 2027 or Senate in 2028?
TM: I don’t think I would run for Senate. It’s the same circus with different monkeys. I would consider running for governor.
H-L: Even if Jamie Comer (representative for Kentucky’s 1st Congressional District) runs?
TM: I don’t know. I’d probably talk to Jamie. He and I are good friends. He is absolutely the person from Kentucky in the House I talk to the most.
H-L: Let’s say Trump does go all-in. And let’s say you pull it out. You beat the chosen candidate. Trump makesan in-person appearance or two with this person, they get a bunch of money from a Kentucky MAGA, the new PAC. What would that mean for Trump’s political standing and legacy?
TM: I think it’d be a blow to him, and it would elevate me. I think ultimately, that’s the one reason Trump might not pull the trigger is because he hates to lose. I think it’s why he didn’t pull the trigger in 2020 and in 2022 I think it’s why he endorsed me. He is worried about his political legacy and he hates to lose, and if somebody got in this race and wasn’t doing well, Trump would blame them and throw them under the bus because he’s worried about his legacy. I’m not that worried about mine — politically anyway.
This story was originally published June 24, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
