WASHINGTON — Thomas Massie has long portrayed himself as an unflinching fiscal hawk in Congress, willing to publicly tangle with President Donald Trump on everything from spending bills to foreign aid to the release of records related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

But over the next five months, Trump’s allies will project a different image of the Kentucky Republican as they seek to convince voters in his deep red 4th District that their congressman’s vaunted independent streak has curdled into deep hostility that jeopardizes the Trump agenda.

Leading the charge will be Ed Gallrein, a retired Navy SEAL officer who has the president’s blessing as he challenges Massie in the Republican primary.

“People feel betrayed,’’ Gallrein said in a phone interview between chores at his farm 30 miles east of Louisville. “He celebrates being a disruptor ... chasing fringe issues, (but) he’s using very deeply flawed logic that voting against conservatives and with the folks that are driving us off the cliff into socialism somehow helps the people of this district.”

Gallrein’s campaign has been on a bit of a slow roll since Trump endorsed him four days before he officially launched his run on Oct. 21. But it kicks into higher gear this week: On Monday, he released an introductory video that touts his four Bronze Stars and his work on his family’s farm — and also provides a preview of his line of attack against the incumbent.

“In combat, the mission fails when ego comes before duty,’’ Gallrein says in the spot. “In Congress, Thomas Massie does just that, undermining President Trump’s plan to save America.”

Massie, 54, has grown accustomed to decisive victories since first coming to Congress in 2012. But he faces the toughest fight of his political career in the May primary against Gallrein. The race will test whether Trump’s most prominent Republican critic can survive a multimillion-dollar onslaught in a district that the president carried by 36 points in 2024, according to calculations by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.

Massie says he’s ready. He’s already amassed a $2 million campaign war chest, money he’ll need to fend off what he estimates will be at least $20 million in attacks from super PACs aligned with Trump and from those angry at Massie for opposing aid to Israel.

A farmer with an engineering degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Massie said he thinks the GOP will lose the House majority in 2026 — and he expects the outside spending against him will be a factor. But he expressed confidence in his own fundraising abilities.

“I’m going to have to raise millions of dollars, which I have been successfully doing, and I’m going to have to spend it wisely. But if I do that, I’ll win,’’ Massie said in a recent interview. “I just have to execute on reminding the voters of what my accomplishments are.”

A far-reaching fight

Massie has been omnipresent on cable news and social media since joining with progressive California Rep. Ro Khanna to force a vote on a bill to require the Justice Department to hand over documents related to the Epstein investigation. He’s reveled in his role as a maverick, embracing the #SassyWithMassie hashtag.

Trump had long promised to release the files, but he reversed that position earlier this year as his past ties to Epstein came under new scrutiny. Ultimately, the bill was brought to the floor by a procedural gambit led by Massie and Khanna, and Trump dropped his opposition after the effort appeared destined to succeed. The bill passed the House 427-1.

A framed copy of the bill with Trump’s signature hangs in Massie’s Capitol Hill office, which he said insulates him against Gallrein’s attacks that he doesn’t back the president’s agenda.

The tussle over the Epstein documents wasn’t the first time the two men have sparred this year. Massie was one of just two House Republicans who voted against Trump’s signature domestic policy bill; he said his opposition is based on concerns about the measure’s impact on the national debt. They’ve also broken on other topics, including foreign aid to Israel and other allies.

The Gallrein campaign accuses Massie of sharply ramping up his animosity toward Trump in recent months.

“When voters learn that he’s not just some thorn in the side, that he has actively been a roadblock to the president, they really do not like it,’’ Gallrein campaign spokesman Lance Trover said.

Massie has already been the target of a burst of negative attacks from super PACs funded by Trump allies.

Over the summer, MAGA KY unleashed an ad calling on voters to fire Massie for “siding with Democrats and the ayatollah,” a reference to him denouncing U.S. military strikes against Iran to prevent Tehran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Another ad criticized Massie for voting against Trump’s massive tax and spending law.

“The state of play now is that the anti-Massie super PAC has gone dark and has been dark for a few months, and a pro-Massie super PAC is spending a million dollars on ads right now in the congressional district,” Massie said. “That’s allowed me to not spend my own money, and I’m just saving it until next year when the campaign season heats up.”

Trump’s demand for unalloyed loyalty and his vows to exact political punishment on those who oppose his agenda have led several notable GOP critics — including Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia — to walk away from politics rather than endure continued attacks and a Trump-backed primary challenger.

Massie doesn’t plan to join them. He says he views Trump’s attacks on him as warnings to his fellow House Republicans to stay in line.

“He’s doing this to intimidate my colleagues because he knows he’s not going to intimidate me,’’ the congressman said.

Besides, Massie said, such attacks have limited leverage with voters who have grown accustomed to backing him by large margins. He maintains that his conservative ideology, threaded with a streak of libertarian politics, is a good match for the district, which reaches across northern Kentucky from rural counties in the east to the suburbs of Cincinnati and Louisville.

“The thing I hear the most when I’m at county fairs or Rotary Clubs is, ‘I don’t agree with you on everything, but I really appreciate that you take a stand up there and voting on principle,’’’ Massie said. “That’s my brand back in the district.”

The dividing line

Trump’s endorsement of Gallrein, delivered on his Truth Social platform in mid-October, was full-throated. “CAPTAIN ED GALLREIN IS A WINNER WHO WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN,’’ the president wrote, calling Massie “a weak and pathetic RINO,” or Republican in Name Only.

But Massie’s supporters say he shouldn’t be confused with a member of the “Never Trump” resistance.

“People know that Thomas will support the president when he’s right,’’ said state Rep. Savannah Maddox, a longtime Massie backer. “Thomas voted for the tax cuts in the first Trump administration. He voted to fund the border wall. … People don’t understand why President Trump is attacking Thomas for doing the things he himself said he wanted to do.”

On many key issues, including abortion, border security and gun policy, Massie and Gallrein are in alignment — Trump and his MAGA movement represent the key dividing line.

Gallrein, 67, has never served in elective office before. He ran for state Senate last year but narrowly lost a three-way Republican primary. He served in the Navy for 30 years, rising to the rank of captain and deploying to Panama, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan before returning to the family farm.

He says his experience in the military and in farming has taught him to focus on the work and forgo the spotlight.

“It’s about getting results,” Gallrein said. “You’ve got to get results for … folks, because you’re representing them, their families, their lives, their grandchildren, their hopes and their dreams. That’s what we’re doing out there, not (being) a showboat, spiking the football like I’m the smartest guy in the room.”

Massie and his supporters plan to attack Gallrein as a “rubber stamp” for Trump.

Kentucky state Rep. T.J. Roberts, who met Massie years ago as a teenage tea party activist, said the lawmaker’s independent streak has won him respect.

“Thomas Massie is the bravest currently sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives,’’ Roberts said.

Besides, he added, “if you agree with someone 100% of the time, we have a word for that. It’s called worship, and there’s only one being that’s … walked the earth that’s ever been entitled to that.”

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