{"id":15759,"date":"2025-11-17T17:01:47","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:01:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/he-got-tired-of-me-winning-how-thomas-massie-outmaneuvered-trump-on-epstein\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T17:01:47","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T17:01:47","slug":"he-got-tired-of-me-winning-how-thomas-massie-outmaneuvered-trump-on-epstein","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/he-got-tired-of-me-winning-how-thomas-massie-outmaneuvered-trump-on-epstein\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018He got tired of me winning\u2019: How Thomas Massie outmaneuvered Trump on Epstein"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump’s call for House Republicans to support releasing Jeffrey Epstein-related documents<\/a> was a stunning capitulation after a months-long campaign to block the vote.<\/p>\n

It was also a specific defeat for Trump at the hands of a despised GOP opponent: Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe got tired of me winning,\u201d Massie said of Trump\u2019s U-turn in an interview Monday morning.<\/p>\n

Insisting \u201cI DON\u2019T CARE!\u201d in a late-night Truth Social post, Trump was bowing to the inevitable \u2014 a broad House Republican mutiny on a vote that was only scheduled because Massie forced it. It was the result of Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) launching a discharge petition aimed at sidestepping senior GOP leaders who desperately wanted to avoid bringing the issue to the House floor.<\/p>\n

The campaign to avoid the vote got remarkably ugly in the days before Trump finally conceded, with the president personally attacking Massie for recently remarrying after the sudden death last summer of his wife of more than 30 years. Just hours before Trump\u2019s reversal, one of his top political advisers called him \u201cgarbage\u201d in an X post.<\/p>\n

That adviser, Chris LaCivita, is carrying out a Trump-ordered effort to unseat Massie<\/a> from the rural northern Kentucky seat he has held since 2012. Trump recently endorsed<\/a> a challenger, former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, in the GOP primary.<\/p>\n

Massie has not flinched from the threats. Politically, he has seen the best fundraising of his congressional career, entering October with more than $2 million in his campaign coffers. As for the personal attacks, Massie said Monday he and his wife were laughing them off.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe said, \u2018I told you we should have invited him to the wedding!\u2019\u201d Massie said.<\/p>\n

Massie\u2019s efforts around Epstein have been no laughing matter for the White House, with top aides and legislative affairs staff furiously scrambling late last week to head off the completion of the discharge petition.<\/p>\n

That included pulling Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) into the White House Situation Room in the final hours to try to persuade her to remove her name from the petition she had signed alongside GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, a survivor of sexual assault. All three have cast their support for the petition as an effort to protect women.<\/p>\n

The effort failed. The three female House Republicans held firm, and the petition notched its final and 218th signature Wednesday moments after Rep. Adelita Grijalva (D-Ariz.) was sworn in following her September special election win.Despite a final barrage of attacks from the president over the weekend \u2014 which included Trump calling his once-close ally Greene a \u201ctraitor\u201d and threatening a GOP primary against her \u2014 backers of the Massie-Khanna discharge effort knew they had the president beat.<\/p>\n

There were emerging signs that it was Massie, not Trump, who had his fingers closer to the pulse of the MAGA base.<\/p>\n

Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas), a top Trump ally in the House, posted online he would be \u201cvoting NO on the Epstein Hoax\u201d as he sought to rally Republicans to \u201cstand by\u201d the president\u2019s side. Nehls received an immediate barrage of online pushback, suggesting a position against full transparency on Epstein would not be sustainable.<\/p>\n

Massie, in conjunction with the three GOP women who signed the discharge petition, have sought to put Epstein\u2019s victims front and center amid the battle. They invited several to Capitol Hill in September to keep the fight in the public eye as members returned from the summer recess. They are tentatively scheduled to appear together again Tuesday ahead of the final House vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis shouldn\u2019t have been a battle, and unfortunately, it has been one,\u201d Greene said as she left a meeting with Epstein victims in September.<\/p>\n

Yet for months, senior White House officials labored to convince rank-and-file Republicans to keep their names off Massie\u2019s discharge effort. That, according to five people granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, included warnings that any effort to support an Epstein vote would be viewed as a direct and personal move against the president.<\/p>\n

Trump has denied wrongdoing in relation to the Epstein allegations, and no evidence has suggested that Trump took part in Epstein\u2019s trafficking operation. The president also has maintained that he and Epstein had a falling out years ago.<\/p>\n

In an effort to undercut Massie’s effort, GOP leaders and the Justice Department worked to release 30,000 pages of DOJ documents in early September, right after Massie could begin gathering signatures on his petition. But lawmakers quickly realized most of the materials had been previously released.<\/p>\n

Around that time, the White House\u2019s key legislative affairs liaison to the House, Jeff Freeland, was on Blue Light News, seeking to head off Massie right after lawmakers returned from recess.<\/p>\n

\u201cJeff introduced himself to me outside of the Capitol, and he said I was moving too fast for him,\u201d Massie said in the interview. \u201cI told him I made a mistake by getting 12 sponsors [on the Epstein bill], because I had given him his whip list to block the most likely signers\u201d of the discharge petition.<\/p>\n

Over the past week, it became clear to House GOP leaders that they would no longer be able to keep the Epstein measure off the House floor. Shortly after Grijalva signed, Speaker Mike Johnson announced he would expedite the vote, holding it this week rather than next month as required under the discharge petition. Still, with Trump opposing the effort, he maintained Massie\u2019s legislation was reckless and \u201cmoot\u201d now that the House Oversight Committee was heading up its own probe.<\/p>\n

Last week, Johnson tried calling one of the three GOP women who had signed on to Massie\u2019s discharge petition. The member looked down at her phone and let the call go to voicemail, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter who declined to identify the specific lawmaker.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s Sunday night edict was directed only at House Republicans, according to Trump officials. The president could order the release of the entire Epstein document trove at any time, vote or no vote. So far, he\u2019s declined to do so.<\/p>\n

Senate GOP leaders have not committed to holding a vote on the Epstein bill if the House passes it as expected this week. While Republicans still widely assume the measure will die in the other chamber, it will be hard to argue to GOP senators that they should take the political heat while their House counterparts get to take a consequence-free vote.<\/p>\n

Massie has been working with Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), who authored a Senate version of the bill, to bring the matter to a head across the Rotunda. Senate Democrats are already exploring options to force a vote in the coming weeks.<\/p>\n

Massie said last week that the Epstein drama reflects how Republicans are starting to take stock of a post-Trump political world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey need to look past 2028 and wonder if they want this on their record for the rest of their political career,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight now, it’s OK to cover up for pedophiles, because the president will take up for you if you’re in the red districts \u2014 that’s the deal,\u201d Massie told reporters last week. \u201cBut that deal only works as long as he’s popular or president. \u2026 If they’re thinking about the right thing to do, that’s pretty obvious: You vote for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump’s call for House Republicans to support releasing Jeffrey Epstein-related documents was a stunning capitulation after a months-long campaign to block the vote. It was also a specific defeat for Trump at the hands of a despised GOP opponent: Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky. \u201cHe got tired of me winning,\u201d Massie said of […]<\/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-15759","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\/15759","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=15759"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15759\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}