Trump Called Massie a ‘Loser’ in Massie’s Own Backyard. Half the Arena Didn’t Clap.

File photo: Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale, Arizona, Aug. 23, 2024.

President Donald Trump walked into Thomas Massie’s backyard on Saturday, called the Kentucky congressman a “jerk” and a “loser,” and waited for the roar. According to the Associated Press reporters in the room, he got about half of one.

About half of Truist Arena, on Northern Kentucky University’s campus in Highland Heights, clapped at the president’s barbs, AP reported. The other half sat silent. It was an odd moment for a crowd that had lined up on a brisk fall morning to see him, and it came 17 days before the Nov. 3 midterms, in a Cincinnati-area district a short drive from the Indiana line.

Massie isn’t even on the ballot anymore. Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL, took the 4th District Republican nomination from him in May with 54.9% of the vote, after Trump came to Hebron in March to campaign against the incumbent. On Saturday, Gallrein told the crowd it had been one year to the day since Trump met with him to encourage the challenge.

So why is the president still swinging? AP’s summary of the feud is short: Massie pushed for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and opposed the Iran war, which began with U.S. strikes in February. Trump’s own words on Saturday, as quoted by WLKY, filled in the rest:

“Massie, the worst. What a loser he is, what a loser. He’s the worst. He’s a terrible guy, terrible, everything was always a ‘no’.”

Plenty of conservatives would hear that last line as a résumé. A congressman who tells his own leadership no and wants the Epstein records out in daylight is doing what the grassroots spent years begging Washington Republicans to do. AP put it more carefully, writing that Massie “still has a following for standing on his staunchly conservative principles, even when it meant voting against his own party.” Half an arena in his district seemed to agree.

The irony is that Gallrein had warned against exactly this kind of fight from the same stage. “We cannot allow our internal divisions to weaken us on the global stage because world peace and stability is at stake,” he told the crowd. Later in the afternoon, the president brought Gallrein up beside him and went after Massie anyway.

The rest of the speech was heavy on promises and light on price tags. Trump repeated his pledge that if Republicans hold the House and Senate, “I’m going to give all adults, citizens in the United States of America $5,000,” and put the cost at about $1 trillion. AP noted that the payout would most likely cost more than that, would need Congress to approve it, and would pile onto an annual budget deficit of nearly $1.8 trillion.

Then came something new for Kentucky. Trump said that if Republicans win, the Department of Defense would invest in reviving a drug manufacturing facility in the state, a promise AP described as “seemingly conditional.” The AP and local TV accounts published Saturday did not name the plant or put a dollar figure on it. Taxpayers should want both, plus an answer to a simpler question: if the plant matters to national defense, why should it hinge on who wins a House race?

On gas prices, the issue rallygoers almost unanimously named as their biggest worry, Trump said the Iran war would end soon and that prices would drop lower than they were before. AP pointed out he has made that prediction many times over the nearly eight months the war has run. Andy Barr’s version from the same stage was blunter: “Iran is to blame for higher gas prices.” A day earlier, Trump had put a sweeping new Russia sanctions law on hold, after recently announcing a diesel deal with Vladimir Putin to import Russian energy, a long-shot bid to bring those pump prices down, AP reported.

Trump also told the crowd how much more he can get done now. “I don’t think I could have done this in my first term. This is a much more powerful term,” he said, riffing on renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Conservatives who like a president with sharper elbows should also remember that every power this White House claims will pass, intact, to whoever sits there next.

In the race for Mitch McConnell’s open Senate seat, Trump called Barr “a warrior” and tore into Democratic nominee Charles Booker: “He is a communist. His name is Charles Booker. Nobody respects him,” according to WLKY. Barr promised the crowd that “Kentucky common sense is going to defeat socialist crazy.” Early voting in Kentucky starts Oct. 29.

Highland Heights was Trump’s third stop in the region in a matter of weeks, after Youngstown on Monday night and the Dayton area about a week and a half ago, WLWT reported.

Trump has been asking voters this fall to “pretend that I’m on the ballot.” In Highland Heights on Saturday, half the room was still thinking about a man who isn’t.

Written by Hoosiers for Hoosiers.