WASHINGTON — Amid an unpopular war with Iran and slumping poll numbers linked to a sluggish economy, President Donald Trump resorted to name-calling Wednesday in a bid to boost Ed Gallrein in his GOP primary against Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie.

Trump took a break from overseeing his 12-day-old bombardment of targets inside Iran to make a stop in the rebellious Republican lawmaker’s 4th District in the Bluegrass State. The Republican Party head is trying to pull off a rare double for a sitting president: Push out a seven-term member from his own party while also retaining control of the House.

Trump, speaking on stage in Hebron, called Massie “the worst person,” telling an audience “there’s something wrong with him.” He also said the incumbent has been attacking farmer and former Navy SEAL Ed Gallrein, who the president has endorsed in the GOP primary. Trump launched into his critique of Massie by telling the crowd the lawmaker “voted with the radical left Democrats in Congress” on a number of issues.

“Thomas Massie is a disaster for our party,” Trump said. “He comes from a state that I won by a landslide. I got the highest vote in the history of your commonwealth. … That means that people like me and I love them.

“We got to get rid of this loser. This guy is bad. He’s disloyal to the Republican Party. He’s disloyal to the people of Kentucky, and most importantly, he is disloyal to the United States of America,” the president said of Massie. “And he’s got to be voted out of office as soon as possible.”

Trump tied Massie to several issues that have been the core of his early midterms cycle campaign stump remarks: tax cuts and immigration. On the latter, he said of Massie: “He voted against our historic funding for border security. He voted against border security, where we took the worst border in the history of our country, made it the best border in the history of our country.” Massie was the lone Republican to vote against the Homeland Security spending measure that passed the House Jan. 22.

After Trump called Gallrein onto the stage, Gallrein led a “U-S-A” chant before telling the crowd: “Tom Massie stands with the ladies of ‘The View.’ Mr. President, we stand with you, ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!” (That’s what Trump, as a candidate in 2024, yelled to rally crowd in Butler, Pa., after surviving an assassination attempt.)

Gallrein also echoed Trump by saying, “Democrats are trying to destroy our nation.” Moments earlier, the president said he “has my complete and total endorsement.”

‘Misfits and losers’

Before bringing Gallrein up, Trump also told the audience in Hebron that Democratic lawmakers “want to raise your taxes higher than you’ve ever had before,” adding: “We have to win the midterms. The midterms are going to be very, very important to keep it going.”

Massie has voted against Trump on a number of measures, pushed hard for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files and most recently criticized the Iran conflict.

“They’re paying to bus people to the Trump event in my Congressional District,” Massie wrote on X. “What they’ll discover is Trump fans in KY-4 and across the entire Commonwealth also support my work on the Epstein files, reigning in spending, ending forever wars, draining the swamp, and food freedom!”

Even before Trump departed the White House, first for a stop in Cincinnati, then a motorcade ride over the border into Massie’s district, he made clear his mind was already on the lawmaker he wants to oust.

Trump used a Wednesday morning social media post to try giving a boost to Gallrein — but he did not include Gallrein’s name in the post. Longtime incumbents like Massie often depend, in part, on name recognition to hold their seats.

“I predict that “Representative” Thomas Massie will go down as the WORST Republican Congressman in the long and fabled history of the United States Congress, even worse than Crazy Liz Chaney, Cryin’ Adam Kinzinger, and Marjorie ‘Traitor’ Brown (Remember, Green turns to Brown under stress!),” he said, the latter a derisive reference to ally-turned-foe Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned from Congress in January. He also misspelled the name of former Rep. Liz Cheney.

“They are all misfits and losers, but Massie, who is running against a great American Patriot in the Kentucky Primary, will hopefully lose BIG,” he wrote. “I LOVE KENTUCKY!!!”

‘For them, it’s a war’

The commander in chief donned his campaigner in chief hat on Wednesday, part of what some of his aides have promised will be a “robust” midterms campaign schedule.

Trump again defended his surprise war with Iran, which multiple polls show is opposed by a majority of Americans. And he tried, during the day’s first stop at a pharmaceutical facility in Ohio, to redefine what he called a “war” when announcing the military operation on Feb. 28.

“It’s an excursion that will keep us out of a war,” he told reporters traveling with him. “For them, it’s a war. For us, it’s turned out to be easier than we thought.”

His latest explanation for why he chose to hit the Islamic Republic now came as some influential conservative voices have spoken out against the conflict. His decision to go to war runs directly counter to Trump’s long-espoused policy against U.S. military misadventures amid his team’s inability to clearly justify the strikes, clearly explain what would constitute victory or point to an exit plan.

Popular podcaster Joe Rogan, who endorsed Trump before the 2024 election and has since criticized the president over a host of issues, pushed back on arguments coming from the likes of GOP Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Ted Cruz of Texas, calling them “insane.”

“I mean, this is why a lot of people feel betrayed, right? He ran on ‘no more wars, end these stupid, senseless wars,’ and then we have one that we can’t even really clearly define why we did it,” Rogan said on his show this week. “It just doesn’t make any sense to me, unless we’re acting on someone else’s interests, like particularly Israel’s interests.”

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