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Rep. Thomas Massie — a Republican fiscal hawk facing a President Donald Trump-backed primary challenger in Kentucky — has previously described himself as “America First,” but now he says he thinks that he’s “America only.”
“I am tired of sending money overseas,” he told Fox News Digital during an interview on Thursday.
“I am tired of favoring foreign beef over U.S.A.-grown beef,” he continued. “I’m ready to be America only. And I think all congressmen should be that way.”
Massie gave Trump a mixed review, saying that the president is America First on “some” fronts.
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“But when it comes to the beef, he is not America first. When it comes to sending money overseas to Ukraine and Israel,” Massie said, “I think he needs to get back to his campaign promises and put America first. Because we’re not gonna make America great again by sending our money overseas.”
Massie noted that his “biggest disagreement” with both the Trump administration and House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is the increase in spending.
“I mean, I thought we were conservatives. Why are we spending more this year than Joe Biden spent in his last year? Actually, we’re spending about $200 billion dollars more,” he said, adding that the consequence “is inflation and higher interest rates.”
“And people are feeling that. You can’t gaslight them,” Massie added. “You can’t tell them that things are getting cheaper when they’re not getting cheaper.”
In a statement to Fox News Digital, White House spokesman Kush Desai accused Massie of “Fake Math.”
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“Here are the facts: President Trump’s Working Families Tax Cut Act cut mandatory spending by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, and the budget deficit from April to September of this year is down a staggering 40% compared to last year, when Joe Biden was president,” Desai declared in the statement.
“Instead of Fake Math, Thomas Massie should reflect on how he betrayed his voters and hardworking Americans when he voted with every Democrat against the biggest tax cut for working families in American history, including no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime pay, increased child tax credits, and permanence for the 2017 Trump Tax Cuts,” he added.
Massie said his other disagreements with what has been happening in D.C. are “secondary” to the spending issue.
“I would say, we need to follow through on some of our campaign promises. For instance, release the Epstein files,” he said.
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Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., have been spearheading a bid to force a House vote on a proposal that would compel the release of materials pertaining to Jeffrey Epstein.
Their discharge petition has amassed 217 of the 218 signatures needed to force the vote, but Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, who has said she will sign on, has still not yet been sworn in to office more than six weeks after winning a special election in Arizona.
Johnson “has tried every which way he can to avoid this vote,” Massie claimed, asserting that the speaker has not sworn in the Democrat because she “represents the 218th signature I need to force a vote on releasing the Epstein files.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Johnson’s office for comment.
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Massie, who owns cattle himself, said the president has “sort of gut punched the cattle ranchers and… livestock farmers” in the U.S.
During remarks aboard Air Force One last month, Trump indicated the U.S. was considering buying beef from Argentina to drive down prices.
Days later Reuters reported that a White House official indicated that the administration was quadrupling the nation’s low-tariff imports of beef from the South American nation. Increasing the tariff rate quota to 80,000 metric tons will allow Argentina to send greater quantities of the product to America at a lower rate of duty, according to the outlet.
The president has Massie in his political crosshairs — he has repeatedly reviled the congressman on Truth Social.
In a post on Monday, Trump referred to Massie as “a Weak and Pathetic RINO” — a pejorative acronymn that stands for “Republican in name only.” He also called the congressman “a totally ineffective LOSER,” while expressing his support for primary challenger Ed Gallrein, who Trump is backing in the race.
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Even as the president tries to convince voters in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District to reject Massie, the lawmaker said that he does not regret endorsing Trump ahead of the 2024 election, noting that former Vice President Kamala Harris would have been a total “disaster.”
Massie initially backed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in the GOP presidential primary, but DeSantis dropped out and backed Trump, and Massie later endorsed the Republican juggernaut as well.
“And I’m glad that President Trump won,” he said.
Trump has “done a lot of good things,” he said, adding that many of them have been carried out via executive order, and he thinks Congress should vote on more of the issues so that the president’s moves are not simply “temporary actions.”
Asked whether he’d have any interest in potentially running for president himself, Massie said that he is not interested.
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