Republican Congressman Thomas Massie was elected to represent Kentucky’s 4th District in 2012 after serving as Lewis County judge-executive.
He’s been re-elected to the office ever since and he has earned a reputation for voting his mind, even when that goes against the rest of his party or the commander in chief.
Now President Trump is throwing his political weight behind challenger Ed Gallrein to try to defeat Massie in the Republican primary on May 19.
On Cincinnati Edition, we talk to Rep. Massie about the race and why he is seeking re-election.
Cincinnati Edition invited Ed Gallrein onto the show, but his campaign did not respond to repeated invitations.
We follow the interview with analysis and fact-checking of the race.
Guests:
- Congressman Thomas Massie, Republican representing Kentucky's 4th District
- Sylvia Goodman, Capitol reporter, Kentucky Public Radio
- McKenna Horsley, politics reporter, Kentucky Lantern
Beginning at noon, call 513-419-7100 or email talk@wvxu.org to have your voice heard on this topic. You can catch a recorded replay at 8 p.m.
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This episode was transcribed using a combination of AI speech recognition and human editors and has been lightly edited for clarity. It may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. You also can watch the conversation on YouTube.
Republican Congressman Thomas Massie was elected to represent Kentucky's 4th District in 2012 after serving as Lewis County Judge Executive. He's been re-elected to the office ever since, and he's earned a reputation for voting his mind even when that goes against the rest of his party or the Commander in Chief. Now President Trump is throwing his political weight behind challenger Ed Gallrein to try to defeat Congressman Massie in the Republican primary on May 19. This is Cincinnati Edition on WVXU, I'm Lucy May. Congressman Massie joins me in this recorded interview to talk about the race and why he's seeking re-election. Thanks for being here.
Thanks for having me here, Lucy.
A note, Cincinnati Edition invited Ed Gallrein to talk with us, but his campaign did not respond to our invitation. So Congressman Massie, you have served Congress for more than a decade. You've been re-elected seven times. You're very well known in the Commonwealth, but what's less well known about you?
Oh, I try to play a banjo now and then. I grow 15 varieties of peaches on my farm so that I can have a ripe peach from June to September, each tree gets ripe on a different week. I raise wagyu cattle crossed with Angus. I call them wangus cattle. They're delicious. Should I keep going?
Pretty good list.
Well, I think the other thing people maybe have forgotten, but might have known, I went to MIT. I grew up in the foothills of Appalachia, where I live now, but I went to this school that I had never even visited, and my first day there, a car honked at me, and I waved back at it, because I thought they knew me. This was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, so I had culture shock, but I thrived in that environment. It was a meritocracy. Nobody cared about what your ethnicity was or your race. It was all about the curve. Everything was graded on the curve, so you learn to respect people for who they were, not where they came from, unlike the school down the road Harvard, where most of the kids there, their parents had been there. My parents, my mom was a nurse and my dad was a beer distributor, and they had never visited MIT either. So that's a little bit about my background. I have found it's difficult to apply engineering skills to Congress, but I did find one way that I could do it. I built a debt badge that I wear. It's a digital display no bigger than a name tag that has the debt, the national debt, constantly updated with a little LED display. And I was hoping to induce some anxiety among my colleagues who don't seem to be concerned about the debt by wearing this debt badge and having the last five digits spin so fast that you can't see them. They're just a blur. But it's not worked as well as I thought. Some of my colleagues think it's a step counter, but I tried to tell them, I can't go 85,000 steps a second, which is how much the debt is going up.
That'd be pretty fast. And I you're wearing that badge right now.
I'm wearing it now. Don't leave home without it.
So what are your priorities if you are re-elected?
The same priorities that I had 12 years ago, that is to defend the Constitution. We swear an oath to that. You know, most Republicans are big fans of the Second Amendment, but I'm also and I am too; I'm chair of the Second Amendment caucus. I'm now the co-chair with Lauren Bobert from Colorado, so that's a high priority for me, but I care about all the Constitution, so I'm a big fan of freedom of speech. I think you should be able to say things that are even hateful. I don't think that we should try to regulate speech, whether it's on the internet or on campuses. I'm a big fan of the Fourth Amendment. That's put me at odds with a lot of people in Washington, D.C., recently. The Fourth Amendment is your right to privacy, and it says that you got to have a warrant and probable cause if you want to search somebody's possessions. Yet the U.S. government is doing that with a program called Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. And so I recently stood up, objected to the reauthorization of it, and said, ‘We need to put warrants in here.’ And so we had a debate. I didn't win the day, but they didn't win the day either. It was merely a 45-day extension. And so we'll continue that debate after that, and then I care about, like I said, all of the rights. As far as exact policies, transportation and infrastructure is important to me. That's why I've been on that committee since the day I got to Congress. Because we have, obviously, several bridges in the district. We have three interstates – I-71, I-75, I-64 and I do believe there's a federal nexus for infrastructure. I do, you know, I complain that our U.S. government's involved in a lot of things it shouldn't be, but transportation is one of the areas where I am active and think the government has a role. I've supported our CVG airport. I know we're in Ohio today, so maybe I'll reiterate or remind you that we have the airport in Kentucky, even if it's called the Cincinnati airport. It's very important to our district, not just for passenger travel, but it's a big cargo hub for DHL, for Amazon. Amazon lands and takes off 100 planes a day there, and DHL is similar.
You had disagreements with President Trump in his first term, but he did not back a challenger against you back then. Why do you think he did this time?
By the way he did, the disagreement we had was on the COVID stimulus package. He called me a third-rate grandstander, because I said, you know, this is the biggest spending bill in history, and we should vote on it. And I did require Congress to assemble and vote on that bill. It passed. But I think it was important that we had a debate and what, what I predicted would happen, did happen. We've had a lot of inflation because we kept people from working, and we printed money and told them to go spend it. He later – that was 2020, in 2022 – he endorsed me, called me a first-rate defender of the Constitution, but now it is true that we are crossways on some issues. I've been careful to never insult him personally. He did call me a moron at the prayer breakfast, the National Prayer Breakfast, and I'm just glad I'm in his prayers. I refuse to reciprocate with the personal insults, and I always keep it to policy.
So here are the policies that we disagree on and I think what has encouraged him to back my opponent. The first is the big, giant bill that passed. I'm not going to call it beautiful, because once something gets above 1,000 pages, it's never beautiful. There were a lot of signature issues in there that are important to me. In fact, I have a standalone bill to eliminate taxes on tips and to eliminate taxes on Social Security. So that was a big incentive that those, or forms of those, were in that bill. The problem was the bill increased spending dramatically, more so than Joe Biden and Congress together had spent before Trump came in. And I said, if we pass this big bill, we're going to add to the debt and the deficit, and we're going to have higher inflation, higher interest rates and higher costs of everything. And that is, in fact, what's happened. We've added $2.7 trillion to the debt since we took control of the House, the Senate and the presidency, and when I say we, I mean Republicans.
I think there are occasionally a few other issues, just one little minor issue, called the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which your listeners may have heard of before. I teamed up with a colleague on the other side of the aisle, Ro Khanna, and we led a five-month effort to reinforce a vote on a bill to release those files. And after five months, we succeeded, and lo and behold, when I got my bill to the floor, it passed, 427 to 1 in the House, 100 to nothing in the Senate, and the president, who had previously said it would be a hostile act to back the bill, signed it himself. So, I think he probably carries a grudge there on, on having all those files released. It is true that his commerce secretary was embarrassed. It's clear that Howard Lutnick lied to the public. And there are some other friends of the president who were embarrassed by that. There were national figures – the ambassador from Britain to the United States had to resign. The prince lost his title. The CEO of the World Economic Forum had to step down. So I think that's probably what got me in the most trouble.
So why did you fight so hard to get the Epstein files released when so many Republican leaders and leaders in the party were against that?
Well, what's interesting is so many Republican leaders in the party were for it, until we got the White House. You can go back and find JD Vance, you can find Kash Patel, you can find the President himself – his own children – talking about how we would release these files when he came into the White House. And what happened was kind of a placebo. Pam Bondi handed out a bunch of binders that really had nothing in them, and then in the summer of the first year, they announced there would be no investigations whatsoever, and that there was nothing else in these files. And I knew better, because I was talking to the victim's lawyer, and they said there's a lot more in those files. These survivors, we prefer to call them, have given their testimony to the FBI. And they're not releasing that testimony, and there are men who are implicated in that testimony. And so that's when I decided to pursue it. And once I started pursuing it, and we had two press conferences with the survivors, many of whom had never had a chance to speak, they came forward. They spoke right there at the steps of the Capitol, in the biggest press conference that has happened in the over-a-decade that I've been there. And what happened is my mission changed a little bit. I was in it for the sake of government transparency, but I became more motivated to do it for the survivors. Like to get justice for them as I heard their stories.
Well, I want to come back to the legislation that at least the President calls the One Big, Beautiful Bill. I know you don't call it that, but an earlier version of that bill would have overridden local zoning decisions on data centers. What oversight do you think Kentucky state lawmakers should have over data centers?
Yeah, so the first version of the Big Bill had a provision that would let data centers ignore state laws, and not just state laws, but local zoning laws. And I think that's wrong. I think that, you know, when you and I call it sorting the smoke stacks from the cul de sacs, that's not something the federal government can do from Washington, D.C., that has to be up to a local board and a local government. And they, in the first version of the Big Bill, they had a provision to overrule not just the states, but the local zoning commissions. And Marjorie Taylor Greene and I fought to get that taken out, and it was taken out. Fortunately, that issue came up again recently in my Judiciary Committee. We were marking up eight bills one day in a work session, and I noticed number six on the list was to exempt data centers from eight different environmental laws that they couldn't be sued if they didn't have the permits. And you know, even though some of those environmental laws may be onerous, I don't know why you would give an exemption to data centers, but not to the farmers or not to the industry, other industries that could exist. And so I said, this is wrong to give a special privilege to an immunity to data centers. So I tweeted about it – I really right there in real time, blew the whistle, and they decided to take it off of the schedule that day, and it's not come up since.
So when people call me an obstructionist, I didn't obstruct the Big, Beautiful Bill. We made it better by being transparent. And I have obstructed things like special privileges and immunities for data centers and most recently, in the Farm Bill, they had a provision that was going to give special privileges and immunities. I call it a get out of court free card to Monsanto Bayer, which makes glyphosate, but in order to not look like they were doing something for one company, they said, we'll give every pesticide immunity from all state laws, labeling laws, and that was in the Farm Bill. So myself and some other colleagues worked hard. We drafted amendments. We got one of them made in order, he forced it to a vote on the floor of the House, and took that special provision. It was cronyism, really, that would have been extended to pesticide manufacturers at the expense of state laws. We got that removed from the Farm Bill. Again, you could call me an obstructionist, but the Farm Bill passed. I actually would argue that I made the Farm Bill better in the process of that, and I did vote for the Farm Bill because it has one of my pieces, my signature piece of legislation in it, which is a bill to make it easier for farmers to use a local processor and sell their beef, pork and lamb directly to consumers.
Another issue consistently been talking about: You've spoken out against U.S. military strikes in Iran during President Trump's second term. Explain your position on that.
Well, the Constitution is clear that if we're going to have a war, particularly a protracted war that lasts – and this is in law – if it lasts more than 90 days, certainly, but even a short war requires Congressional authorization. Congress should meet. We should debate. We should debate things like, what are the objectives, what's the funding going to be? What are the rules of engagement? Because I think our soldiers and our naval men, seamen and the Air Force, those folks deserve a clear mission with the tools they need to get the job done and objectives so that when they get done, they get to come back home. And what happens when you kind of do an ad hoc wading into a war where the objectives aren’t clear, you don't have a line in the sand, and it's hard, and you get drawn into it, like we are right now. And this is unfortunately causing the price of gasoline and diesel to be very high in Kentucky. It's also causing the price of fertilizer to be high. And these temporary disruptions have long tails, because right now is when farmers decide how much fertilizer to put on and whether they're going to grow corn, which takes a lot of fertilizer, or whether they're going to grow soybeans, and it takes a while to grow that stuff. Myself, I'm a farmer. I don't do corn and soybeans, but I have hay, and you have to decide in the spring how much fertilizer am I going to put on? And sometimes you cut corners and you say it's high this year, so I'll just try to coast off the fertilizer from last year. And I'm afraid there'll be a lot of farms that do that, and there'll be less hay produced this year. It's going to raise the price of virtually everything going forward.
Why do you think more members of Congress aren't insisting on exercising that authority?
I have noticed in the time that I've been in Congress, it becomes a partisan issue. Now, if this were Joe Biden's war, the Democrats would probably be for it and the Republicans would be against it, but because it's Donald Trump's war, most of the Republicans are for it and most of the Democrats are against it. You do have some people who aren't partisans. I fondly call them ideologues. So there are few ideologues on the left side of the aisle and a few on the right side of the aisle. I know that's supposed to be a pejorative, but I seek out ideologues on both sides of the aisle because I know at any given moment, they may break with their party if the party has betrayed the ideas that they campaigned on. And so you do have some partisans. Most folks are partisan, but there are a few ideologues, like, for instance, Ro Khanna worked with me to try to, when Joe Biden was president, and there were basically acts of war happening in Yemen. We drafted these same types of proposals and had votes on them, and it's hard to get your party to stick to its guns. That would be my case for why people should vote for me. Like, I haven't betrayed the party. I vote with the party 90 percent of the time, but in the 10 percent of the time, they've done a 180 for instance, search warrants on FISA – this is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that was used to spy on members of Congress. It's been used to spy on the general public. The FBI agents have even used this program in conjunction with the dating apps to check out people they see in the dating app. They run them through this database without a warrant, and there was a promise that we would require a warrant when this program expired and needed renewal, and the Republicans have abandoned that promise right now, but we'll see.
I want to ask you more about the campaign that you're dealing with right now. An attack ad airing currently says you voted against finishing President Trump's border wall and that you're essentially soft on immigration enforcement policies. Will you address that for us?
Sure. So if I could make one change about Congress, it wouldn't – you know, there's some fundamental structural things you could change that would make it better, but the one, like, time to read the bills and all that. The one thing that would make it better is if we had separate votes on separate topics. So because in my 12 to 14 years in Congress, I have voted against omnibus bills, which the omnibus bill is, unfortunately the entire spending bill for the entire year, you can run virtually any ad you want against me. You could say I didn't vote to pay the soldiers. I didn't vote to vote for the wall, if there was wall funding in it. You could say that about all of these. But if you look at the instances where we've taken separate votes, I have voted to fund the wall on separate votes, I have voted for immigration reform, like our signature package that we can't get the Senate to bring up. I have voted for that. I have voted for the Save Act, which would require photo ID and proof that you're an American citizen before you could vote in a federal election. We're not telling you how you vote, who can vote in your HOA or your school board. We're just saying federal elections, when those are standalone issues, I vote for him, but when they throw all this stuff together, you know, if my opponent had been in Congress and had voted for those omnibus bills, I could give you a litany of bad things that Republicans wouldn't approve of, that he had voted for.
You also face criticism for voting against the bill that funded the Brent Spence bridge project, which was something that people have been fighting for and advocating for for decades around here. Why did you vote against that?
That was Joe Biden's signature legislation, Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and I have supported funding for the Brent Spence bridge from the day I got to Congress, because that's been a high priority. But again, in that bill, it was kind of a continuation of the COVID, profligate COVID spending. There were a couple bills under Trump in 2020 that spent over a trillion dollars, and then Joe Biden continued some of that COVID stimulus, and then the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, although it had, you know, things – like the Brent Spence bridge had a lot of things that weren't infrastructure and a few things that are boondoggles. For instance, this is a very good sounding thing, but bringing broadband to everyone in rural areas. Who wouldn't be for that, right? I don't have broadband at my house in my rural area, so I would love to have broadband there. The problem is, billions of dollars have been wasted. Hundreds of millions in Kentucky on the promise of broadband to rural areas, and one person actually completed the task. That was Elon Musk with Starlink. And I can tell you it works, and it works fabulously. I have it at my house, and the cost for a Starlink dish is like 600 bucks and then $100 a month, but the cost, if the government wants to try to run a fiber optic cable up your holler or down your road, is in the tens of thousands of dollars, and that's the kind of short-sighted thinking. And they precluded Elon Musk from completing those contracts, for instance. Like you would think, OK, well, if the government has a role in making sure that everybody has broadband, then why not just go get the cheapest solution? Well, there's too many cronies who have their hands in the till in Washington, D.C., the contractors that want to dig the dirt and put these cables underground, and so that's why you had things like that in there, and other things that don't even get close to reaching the definition of infrastructure.
This has been a very expensive campaign so far. I think I saw that as of mid-April, more than $12.4 million in ads have been spent on the race, a big chunk of that on attack ads against you. Are you having to campaign and fundraise harder than ever for this election?
So the bad thing about being the nail that sticks up is it's all the force of the whole swamp has come down on me, and it's billionaires. It's not a grassroots funded thing. It's not like a bunch of MAGA, you know, activists have said, I'm going to send $20 to this guy in Kentucky so he can beat Thomas Massie. It's predominantly three billionaires who are upset that I've never voted for foreign aid, particularly foreign aid to Israel, and they're also upset that I vote against the wars. And so these billionaires are funding a Super PAC called MAGA Kentucky. They are not MAGA, and they have never been to Kentucky. They're hedge fund managers and gambling magnates. There will be $6 million spent this week on TV and radio and mail. So I apologize to the folks here in Cincinnati who have to watch the ads about this race in Kentucky. But some people ask me, ‘Well, surely Congressman Massie, now you would be against Citizens United, which allows unlimited spending in Super PACs, and it's a double-edged sword.’ Let me tell you why I'm not against it. There are reforms that I could go for. Let me give you a reform maybe. What if you just said the only money you can spend in Kentucky, in a race in Kentucky, is from the people of Kentucky? I don't believe that would hinder your First Amendment. But the issue of the super PACs, what's happened is Fox News, which is sort of they've got a monopoly on the screens in a lot of Republican houses, particularly people between the ages of 65 and 75. For the last 18 months, they've not invited me on a single show. And why are they doing that? Because they are afraid if they give me a venue to speak, that the White House will shut them out. And they want access more than anything, they need access in this Trump presidency, whether it's with cabinet secretaries to come on their shows, uh, you know, at the drop of a hat, or to get a special scoop on something. That's what Fox wants. And so to keep that special access, they have blacklisted me, so I can't get on TVs in the living rooms of the people that vote in this election, unless I can buy TV ads. Otherwise, it'd be hard to get on Fox. You know, I have to pay to be on Fox now, with my ads
Other prominent Republicans who have disagreed with the president, I'm thinking about Marjorie Taylor Greene. They've decided to retire or not run again. Why are you so determined to stay?
You know, when you go up there and you pound your head against the wall for so long, it's easy to get discouraged, but I still have hope. Look, I got the Epstein files passed six months ago when people said it can never be done. I've got my prime act in the Farm Bill and I've worked on that for 10 years. Next week, I'll have a piece of legislation on the floor that's almost certain to pass that will make it so that there are fewer false denials in the background check system to exercise your Second Amendment. So it's those kind of victories that keep me going. I think it's still possible, and I know I'm giving hope to people. They're hopeful that it's not just red team versus blue team in Washington, D.C., and a partisan exercise every day, that at least somebody will read the bill and make a decision based on what's best for their constituents, not what's best for their party. And so I am that person that is standing out. Like I said, The bad thing about being the nail, the tall nail, is every hammer is gunning for you. The good thing is, a lot of people appreciate what I'm doing, and they're backing me, so I still have hope, and I'm trying to give other people hope.
Well, I've been talking with Congressman Thomas Massie, who has represented Kentucky's 4th district since 2012. Thanks so much for your time today, Congressman.
Thanks Lucy.