Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., warned in a Sunday interview on “Meet the Press” that the Republican Party will be “very vulnerable” during the midterm elections.
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Asked whether the GOP was starting to break with President Donald Trump, Massie said Republicans were “worried about their own political mortality.”
“It’s true, you can take out Republicans in primaries, but Republicans are going to be very vulnerable this fall,” he said.
Massie was defeated in a primary last week by former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, who was backed by Trump. The president strongly opposed Massie, repeatedly criticizing the congressman publicly and urging supporters to vote him out of office.
Massie, who has broken with the Trump administration on issues including the war in Iran and the administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, said his split with Trump was “absolutely worth it for me.”
“I don’t think it’s going to be worth it for the party,” he said. “Look, some people on the left have ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’ — they call it TDS. But there’s a growing number of people on the right who have a form of TDS called ‘Trump Disappointment Syndrome.’”
“And I think what’s going to happen to the party this fall is they’ve disenfranchised a large portion of that constituency that Trump assembled to get us in the White House, in the Senate majority and in the House majority,” he added.
Massie also called out the president’s focus on issues like the construction of the White House ballroom, describing it to moderator Kristen Welker as a “slap in the face of Americans.”
“The ballroom, I mean, that is such an egregious waste of money,” Massie said.
Trump had repeatedly said that the ballroom would be funded with private donations (Comcast Corp., the parent company of NBCUniversal, is one of the donors). But this month, Republicans tried to pass $1 billion in taxpayer funds to go toward security related to the construction. Later, the Senate parliamentarian decided the bill would need to be rewritten to pass through the reconciliation process, which only requires a simple majority for passage and wouldn’t need any Democratic support.
“The president was bragging on the Roman architecture, when in fact we’re operating like a Roman Empire,” Massie said of the president’s description of the ballroom. “We’re overextended overseas with our foreign aid, with our foreign bases. We’re spending money that we don’t have, and the gasoline and rent and groceries are so high that people can’t afford it.”
“I do think it’s dangerous to indulge in these things like a gold-plated ballroom in Washington, D.C., while Americans are suffering,” he added.
Later in the interview, Massie addressed possible White House ambitions in 2028.
Asked whether he was considering a run for president, Massie said, “I will not rule out anything, and right now, I’m not going to rule in anything.”
“Every hour that passes, I get decompressed a little bit more,” he said. “It’s like coming up from the bottom of the ocean, and I’ll take some time and decide what’s next, but I think I will stay engaged in some way or shape. Maybe it’s from the outside. I’ve been exposing what’s going on in Washington, D.C., for years, and I’ll keep doing it.”
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