If Trump Had Been More Like Massie, He Might Be Win­ning the Midterms

Pol­i­tics

If Trump Had Been More Like Massie, He Might Be Win­ning the Midterms

On many issues, the Ken­tucky con­gress­man stuck with the posi­tion that ulti­mate­ly proved more pop­u­lar.

Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Get­ty Images

As Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s approval rat­ings con­tin­ue to sink to his­toric lows and his par­ty faces a poten­tial slaugh­ter in the upcom­ing midterm elec­tions, would Repub­li­cans’ prospects be bet­ter today if he had act­ed more like Rep. Thomas Massie (R‑KY)?

Would Trump’s own approval num­bers be bet­ter?

These might sound like strange ques­tions giv­en the cur­rent polit­i­cal and seem­ing­ly per­son­al chasm between the pres­i­dent and the con­gress­man today, par­tic­u­lar­ly after the for­mer joined with bil­lion­aire Zion­ist donors to oust the latter—a war oppo­nent and Israel critic—in his May GOP Ken­tucky pri­ma­ry, the most expen­sive in U.S. his­to­ry.

Still, it’s a more prac­ti­cal ques­tion than some might real­ize. A brief his­to­ry:

In 2020, Trump called for Massie to be kicked out of the Repub­li­can par­ty, out­raged over the Ken­tucky congressman’s oppo­si­tion to a $2 tril­lion coro­n­avirus relief pack­age.

Trump loathing Massie—that’s famil­iar.

But by 2022, ten­sions had eased, and Trump endorsed Massie as a “Con­ser­v­a­tive War­rior” who “fights hard to Pro­tect your Lib­er­ties.”

Trump and Massie were on the same page, pro­mot­ing a shared Amer­i­ca First agen­da.

In 2024, Massie returned the favor with a late endorse­ment of Trump (Massie was orig­i­nal­ly a sup­port­er of Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSan­tis in that year’s GOP pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry), say­ing, “Don­ald Trump will put Amer­i­cans first by secur­ing our lib­er­ties at home and pre­vent­ing need­less wars abroad. He will Make Amer­i­ca Great Again by empow­er­ing small farm­ers and tak­ing on spe­cial inter­ests.”

Massie had a point at the time. Two years ago, Trump did cam­paign on putting Amer­i­ca first and secur­ing lib­er­ties at home, as well as oth­er orig­i­nal MAGA-and-Massie-friend­ly promis­es like dras­ti­cal­ly cut­ting gov­ern­ment, pro­tect­ing free speech, no new wars, and putting the neo­cons out to pas­ture.

Today, it’s a very dif­fer­ent pic­ture. The Amer­i­can peo­ple no longer seem like a pri­or­i­ty. The pres­i­dent and oth­er promi­nent Repub­li­cans tell Amer­i­cans to endure high gas prices to sup­port their Mid­dle East war, even as Trump-vot­ing truck­ers are irate over the Iran war and the accom­pa­ny­ing spike in diesel costs. Elon Musk’s one-time rad­i­cal gov­ern­ment revamp DOGE is a dis­tant mem­o­ry. Repub­li­cans now reg­u­lar­ly assault the First Amend­ment.

The …