Congressman Thomas Massie served up a brutal put-down for one of his fellow Republicans after she applauded the Donald Trump-backed candidate who just defeated him in the Kentucky primary.
“Happy to deliver the news to President [Donald Trump] the results [sic] from the KY Primary and his defeat of Thomas Massie,” Indiana Congresswoman Erin Houchin, who like Trump had backed Massie’s challenger in the race, Ed Gallrein, posted on X Tuesday. “Well done, [Team Trump!] Congratulations [Ed Gallrein!]”
Massie’s mic-drop response took him just five words. “How do his boots taste?” the GOP maverick wrote under Houchin’s post.
The now-outgoing Kentucky Rep. had proven himself a near-constant thorn in Trump’s side since the president assumed the White House for the second time last January.
Massie, in addition to bucking the party line on spending and foreign military intervention, co-authored bipartisan legislation last year in a bid to force Trump to release investigative files on the crimes of late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, once a close friend of the president’s.
That effort was successful. The pressure campaign led Trump to sign a law last November mandating the publication of the documents. The president has since sparked widespread outcry for both stalling the release and diluting the content of those files, in what critics frame as a blatant effort to protect himself from scrutiny over his historic relationship with Epstein.
Massie, for his pains, came under increasing fire from the president as the campaign unfolded, with Trump eventually backing Gallrein in the race for the Kentucky seat, which Massie conceded on Tuesday.
He told supporters then that “we ran a race that you can be proud of,” further remarking: “When did bipartisanship become a dirty word in this country?”
Massie has also taken shots directly at the president on his way out. “If the legislative branch always votes with the president, we do have a king,” he said Tuesday. “I’m glad I’m in his prayers,” he added, after Trump had called him a “moron” at a prayer breakfast earlier in the day.
The Kentucky incumbent has further issued a withering put-down for the MAGA movement’s most influential mouthpiece in the country: Fox News.
He claimed during his concession speech that the network had banned him for 18 months amid his feud with the president, responding to his audience’s boos by adding: “Hey, their slop is selling so they will keep selling it.”
Trump has meanwhile said that Massie “was a bad guy” and that “he deserves to lose,” sharing details of Gallrein’s win on Truth Social alongside updates on roughly 39 primary races in which his endorsed candidates secured wins or advancements on Tuesday.
