President Donald Trump swung through Greater Cincinnati Wednesday, talking up his TrumpRx prescription drug website in Reading and doing an interview with local TV news before crossing the Ohio River to give remarks at Verst Logistics, a packaging manufacturing facility in Hebron, Kentucky.
At the latter event, a GOP primary for Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District loomed large, with Trump blasting U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie and hyping up his challenger, farmer and veteran Ed Gallrein.
The president’s remarks at Fischer-Thermo Scientific north of Cincinnati weren’t open to the public. He arrived at the facility around 2:30 p.m. according to White House press pool reports, where he met with Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, company leaders and other officials.
He then took a tour of the facility and gave livestreamed remarks to employees and the press pool.
Trump’s motorcade left Reading about 3:20 p.m. to head for the Northern Kentucky event.
“I love Ohio, and we're going to Kentucky,” Trump said. “It's great to be back."
What Trump said in Hebron
Trump’s appearance in Hebron drew hundreds. His remarks often returned to his anger at Massie, a Republican who has often sparred with Trump on foreign U.S. military actions and the release of the Epstein files.
Massie’s opponent was one of several conservative figures giving opening remarks.
“I said yes sir, Mr. President, I will serve,” Gallrein said, recounting how Trump recruited him to challenge Massie. “Thomas Massie has failed the voters of this district time and time again.”
Gallrein hit Massie on his opposition to conflict in Iran, which Trump launched earlier this month. Gallrein claimed the strikes have been necessary to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Massie, meanwhile, has called Trump’s actions “a war of aggression” and sponsored a bill limiting his powers to wage war.
Trump entered a makeshift auditorium lined with 15-foot walls of aluminum cans inside Verst’s facility to Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be An American” and chants of “USA.”
His remarks alternated between claims about his economic policies, riffs on political rivals and the Democratic Party, and comments promoting war in Iran. That ongoing conflict started when Trump launched surprise strikes on the country earlier this month.
“We’ve totally obliterated Iran’s nuclear potential,” he said. “We’ve totally obliterated it.”
During his remarks, Trump claimed his economic policies had boosted companies like Verst, which does logistics and packaging.
'We're seeing results'
Sami Biddle, a bartender and manager at Pensive Distilling in Newport, said Trump’s policies eliminating taxes on tips helped her get closer to a goal to buy a plot of land in the country.
“Trump’s policies have helped me get that much closer to the American dream,” she said.
Trump said his tax cuts and other economic policies have boosted American industry, despite slow economic growth and rising prices.
“Here in the heartland of America, we’re already seeing the results of what we’ve done,” Trump said, claiming big influxes of investment in American industry due to tax cuts in the Big Beautiful Bill.
He cited a Ford plant in Louisville and hundreds of millions of dollars in new investments GE Aerospace is making just outside Cincinnati as examples.
“More Americans are working today than anytime in history,” Trump told the crowd. That claim came despite some recent economic shakiness, including a February jobs report that saw a surprise loss of 92,000 positions nationwide.
Trump also spoke about his efforts to roll back some environmental regulations, including those on coal-fired power plants, and his support for what he called Kentucky’s “clean, beautiful coal.”
What Trump said about Massie, Gallrein
The president blasted Massie during a lengthy stretch of his remarks for his stance on military spending and his hesitance to support the SAVE America Act, which would require voter ID across the country.
“Massie is a complete disaster as a congressman and frankly, as a human being,” Trump said.
Instead, Trump told supporters, they should vote for Gallrein, lauding his Navy SEAL service and bringing him on stage with him to let him give another round of remarks.
“He’s a successful farmer, and I can tell you, he’s strong as hell,” Trump said, describing his handshake.
Trump praised a number of Kentucky figures, from Verst leadership to Republican elected officials to Covington Catholic alumni Nick Sandmann, who was in the middle of a viral controversy around treatment of Indigenous protesters outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., in 2019.
“It’s us together who can beat the radical left,” Sandmann said during his brief remarks.
Influencer and boxer Jake Paul also was on hand. Trump brought him on stage and teased a potential future run for political office. Paul didn’t mention any specific office or ambition to turn to politics, but did praise Trump and Kentucky.
“We need more factories like this one thriving,” Paul said.
Trump circled back around to promoting TrumpRx at the end of his remarks, saying it is part of a larger effort to reduce health care costs.
“They’re only going to go down,” Trump said. “Other presidents have tried to do it, but we’re actually doing something.”
What attendees said
Trump supporters lined up in the rain outside Verst hours before his appearance to hear him speak. Steven Zengerling was one of them. He works for Verst and is a fan of the president. He said he was hoping to hear Trump talk about the economy and the war in Iran. But he also said he thinks those are both going well.
“We all knew when this started that gas prices had the potential to go up,” he said of the war. “It doesn’t really bother me as long as they go back down at some point. I’d like to keep boots off the ground but everything else I’m perfectly fine with at this point.”
Others in line were less sure about the conflict.
Northern Kentucky resident Cloene Hedrick said she is an ardent Trump supporter. But she had concerns about how long the war with Iran will last.
“Well, I hope it ends really soon and no one else gets killed,” she said. Earlier this week, the Pentagon reported that Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, a 26-year-old from Kentucky, was the seventh U.S. service member to be killed since the start of the war.
Hedrick says she believes the war with Iran is the cause for the higher gas prices. Prices rose by an average of 50 cents in the region this week.
A number of attendees wore t-shirts or stickers promoting Gallrein, and the candidate spent some time shaking hands and chatting with the crowd as they waited. Michelle Vezina, who was lined up to hear Trump speak, said Trump’s stamp of approval and Gallrein’s service in the military were enough for her to support him.
“I’ve been a Massie supporter for several years, but I’m a little discouraged by him,” she said. “I appreciate what Trump is doing to unify the country to make it safer and better. I don’t appreciate Massie’s opinions on some of the things related to Trump.”
Others struck a more neutral tone. Caleb Hammond lives on the eastern edge of Massie’s district and has a role with his county’s GOP executive committee. He said he anticipates a hard-fought contest between the two.
“It’s going to be tough,” he said. “Both of them are pretty popular, and it’s going to be interesting to see how it goes.”
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