{"id":9422,"date":"2025-05-20T16:17:34","date_gmt":"2025-05-20T16:17:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/massie-unmoved-on-trumps-big-beautiful-bill-after-presidents-personal-pitch\/"},"modified":"2025-05-20T16:17:34","modified_gmt":"2025-05-20T16:17:34","slug":"massie-unmoved-on-trumps-big-beautiful-bill-after-presidents-personal-pitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/massie-unmoved-on-trumps-big-beautiful-bill-after-presidents-personal-pitch\/","title":{"rendered":"Massie unmoved on Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ after president’s personal pitch"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

President Donald Trump called Rep. Thomas Massie a \u201cgrandstander\u201d during his visit to the Capitol Tuesday morning to whip support for his \u201cbig, beautiful bill,\u201d after previously calling for other Republicans to wage primary challenges against the Kentucky Republican.<\/p>\n

Massie said he\u2019s unbothered \u2014 and still a \u201cno\u201d on the legislation House GOP leaders hope to pass later this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think he wants to talk about cutting spending,\u201d Massie said of the president\u2019s presentation to the House Republican Conference. \u201cHe just said, \u2018go after waste, fraud and abuse.\u2019 \u2026 It means: \u2018Quit talking about it, Freedom Caucus.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Fiscal hawks like Massie \u2014 who is not a formal member of the Freedom Caucus but is aligned with its demands \u2014 have been agitating for leadership to make steep cuts to Medicaid to find savings for the party-line tax and spending package central to enacting Trump\u2019s biggest legislative priorities. That effort has run up against resistance among Republicans across the ideological spectrum who worry about the political fallout of making changes to the safety-net program that could result in millions of Americans losing benefits.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe does not want to cut Medicaid. \u2026 I think he genuinely doesn’t want to cut Medicaid,\u201d said Massie. \u201cHe probably wouldn’t take off one beneficiary who’s not an illegal alien or felon. \u2026 I don’t think he cares about work requirements. If he did, they would be real and they would kick in now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump, indeed, told House Republicans \u201cdon\u2019t fuck around with Medicaid,\u201d<\/a> according to people who were in the room for the meeting.<\/p>\n

The president also told reporters, as he headed into the private confab with members Tuesday morning, \u201cI don\u2019t think Thomas Massie understands government. I think he\u2019s a grand stander,\u201d and reportedly made similar remarks to Massie directly inside the room.<\/p>\n

Massie said afterward he was aware that Trump called him out by name, and that \u201cno,\u201d he was not bothered by it \u2014 but he said he wasn\u2019t familiar with specific accusations of not understanding politics.<\/p>\n

Asked by one reporter how it felt to be \u201ccalled \u2026 a grandstander to your face in there,\u201d Massie replied, \u201cit\u2019s fine \u2026 he says my hair is nicer than [Kentucky Republican Sen.] Rand Paul\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Massie also conceded Trump “probably did a pretty good job in there. Like, if his job was to go in there and convince the Freedom Caucus and the blue-state Republicans, I think he did a good job. And he made a decent effort at convincing me \u2014 directly.\u201d<\/p>\n

GOP leaders can only afford to lose a tiny handful of votes and still pass the party-line package.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

President Donald Trump called Rep. Thomas Massie a \u201cgrandstander\u201d during his visit to the Capitol Tuesday morning to whip support for his \u201cbig, beautiful bill,\u201d after previously calling for other Republicans to wage primary challenges against the Kentucky Republican. Massie said he\u2019s unbothered \u2014 and still a \u201cno\u201d on the legislation House GOP leaders hope […]<\/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-9422","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\/9422","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=9422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}