President Donald Trump is visiting Kentucky this week. He’ll be in Thomas Massie’s (R-Ky.) congressional district, backing an opponent who appears to be struggling.
Local media have obtained a White House invitation that says Trump will be in Hebron, Kentucky, a community that’s part of House District 4, which has elected Massie to Congress multiple times since 2012. The visit is part of a regional trip that includes an appearance in Cincinnati, Ohio, where the president will brag about his new prescription drug website, TrumpRx.gov.
The visit to Kentucky is viewed as an effort by the president to create momentum for Ed Gallrein, a hand-picked candidate who ran unsuccessfully for state office in 2024. Gallrein is a former Navy SEAL and is now a dairy farmer.
Massie’s campaign commented on Monday about Trump’s visit. “Are taxpayers or billionaires like Miriam Adelson paying for the event in KY this week meant to resuscitate Woke Eddie’s lifeless campaign?” it asked. “Likely both.”
Miriam Adelson is the major backer behind one of the PACs supporting Gallrein. Other backers of Gallrein include billionaires John Paulson and Paul Singer, who has funded LGBTQ causes going all the way back to the early 2010s.
Massie’s campaign is banking on an advertising model that paints Gallrein as woke. In one of their ads, they say, “Woke Eddie was a chair and executive coach for a company that trains implementing woke DEI programs, showing films to help them support gender transitions.”
The Race So Far
Massie appears to be doing well against Gallrein — for now. During his campaign headquarters launch on February 21 in Florence, Kentucky, Massie revealed to the people who came out to support him that internal campaign polling showed him ahead of Gallrein by 17 points. But he cautioned against letting off the throttle. There is a lot of time until May 19, and Gallrein’s backers are expected to pour millions more into attack ads. The question is: Will it work?
Another important question is how the Iran War has affected this race. Gallrein, judging by his rhetoric during his 2024 office run, by and large supports U.S. interventionism abroad. This is likely something Trump’s people took into consideration when they decided to back him. But will the Kentuckians of the 4th Congressional District switch to an interventionist ideology, especially since Trump’s own rhetoric was rabidly noninterventionist until recently?
Trump vs. Massie
Trump’s vendetta against Massie became permanent sometime around the middle of last year. Massie opposed the president’s signature legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill, a monstrosity of a reconciliation bill the Congressional Budget Office projects will increase the national debt by at least $3.5 trillion. Massie voted against it on the basis that it’s too expensive for a country that’s $38 trillion in debt, and because of its unconstitutional provisions.
Around the same time, Massie vocally opposed Trump’s bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites. He said it was an unconstitutional act of war, the same thing he has said about this latest, longer war with Iran.
And Massie didn’t do anything to bring himself back in the president’s good graces with his persistent push for the Jeffrey Epstein files. He teamed up with a Democrat from California, Ro Khanna, and together they built enough pressure to push about three million documents into the public sphere.
The Epstein files haven’t been too kind to Trump. Some documents allege the president committed horrendous acts of sexual assault on a minor. The president has denied any wrongdoing, and has never been tried or convicted of such.
What happens in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District this May will serve as a bellwether. Donors from every state in the Union have poured money into Massie’s coffers. This race could very well provide a glimpse into the viability of a constitutionally aligned, paleoconservative electorate that can change American politics.
