{"id":14695,"date":"2025-10-21T14:16:47","date_gmt":"2025-10-21T14:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-backed-gallrein-officially-launches-bid-to-unseat-massie\/"},"modified":"2025-10-21T14:16:47","modified_gmt":"2025-10-21T14:16:47","slug":"trump-backed-gallrein-officially-launches-bid-to-unseat-massie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/trump-backed-gallrein-officially-launches-bid-to-unseat-massie\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump-backed Gallrein officially launches bid to unseat Massie"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie has officially drawn a Donald Trump-backed challenger.<\/p>\n

Ed Gallrein, who preemptively earned the president\u2019s endorsement<\/u><\/a> last week, launched his campaign Tuesday to oust the seven-term lawmaker Trump began targeting earlier this year over Massie\u2019s opposition to Republicans\u2019 megalaw.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis district is Trump Country. The President doesn\u2019t need obstacles in Congress \u2014 he needs backup,\u201d Gallrein said in a statement. \u201cI\u2019ll defeat Thomas Massie, stand shoulder to shoulder with President Trump, and deliver the America First results Kentuckians voted for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump hailed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL captain who ran unsuccessfully for state Senate last year, as a \u201cWINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN\u201d in a Truth Social post last week. He also said Massie \u201cmust be thrown out of office, ASAP.\u201d<\/p>\n

Massie is dismissing Gallrein as a threat, casting his opponent to Blue Light News last week as a \u201cfailed candidate and establishment hack.\u201d He later took to X to post vote totals <\/u><\/a>showing he outran Gallrein in the counties they overlapped last year. And he recently posted the biggest fundraising quarter of his career, hauling in $768,000 from July to September<\/u><\/a> and entering October with more than $2 million in cash on hand.<\/p>\n

The president has been searching for a challenger to Massie since the Kentuckian voted against the \u201cbig, beautiful\u201d bill. Trump\u2019s political operation launched a super PAC aimed at unseating Massie in June, as the congressman pushed to reassert congressional authority over Trump\u2019s military actions in Iran. The group, MAGA KY, has spent $1.8 million on independent expenditures so far.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s effort is coming to a head just as Massie is poised to secure the required 218 signatures<\/u><\/a> to end-run Speaker Mike Johnson and force a floor vote on compelling release of the Justice Department\u2019s entire file on the late sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n

Trump and his team also vetted state Sen. Aaron Reed<\/u><\/a>, who narrowly defeated Gallrein in the GOP primary for that seat last year. Some Republicans had hoped<\/u><\/a> former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron would drop his bid to replace retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell and enter the race against Massie instead.<\/p>\n

Meredith Lee Hill contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kentucky GOP Rep. Thomas Massie has officially drawn a Donald Trump-backed challenger. Ed Gallrein, who preemptively earned the president\u2019s endorsement last week, launched his campaign Tuesday to oust the seven-term lawmaker Trump began targeting earlier this year over Massie\u2019s opposition to Republicans\u2019 megalaw. \u201cThis district is Trump Country. The President doesn\u2019t need obstacles in Congress […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14695","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14695","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}