Rep. Thomas Massie weighed in on Donald Trump’s insulting statements about his marriage and the onslaught of abuse he’s received from pro-Trump loyalists on social media on Sunday as he vowed to keep fighting for the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files held by the Department of Justice.
The libertarian congressman appeared on ABC’s This Week and responded to the pressure mounted on him by the White House to drop his bid for the release of the Epstein files.
“Trump’s being a bully, or trying to be a bully,” Massie dismissively told Jonathan Karl. He joked that his wife said “I told you so, we should have invited Donald Trump, he’s mad that he didn’t get an invitation (to their wedding).”
He added that Trump was attempting to organize a primary challenge against him, which he has mocked as unserious.
He continued: "I would remind my Republican colleagues who are deciding how to vote, Donald Trump can protect you in red districts right now by giving you an endorsement, but in 2030, he's not gonna be the president and you will have voted to protect pedophiles if you don't vote to release these files. And the president can’t protect you then. This vote – the record of this vote will last longer than Donald Trump's presidency."
“[H]ere's what's interesting,” Massie continued. “The people financing the campaign [against me] consist completely of three billionaires, and they're all in the Epstein class. One of them is named in Epstein's phone book."
Massie, who recently remarried, is one of four Republican members of Congress who publicly defied the administration and signed on to a discharge petition forcing a vote on a bill that would require the Justice Department to release all files pertaining to its 2019 investigation of Epstein. The 54-year-old Kentucky congressman found himself widowed in June of 2024 after his first wife Rhonda died from an illness; Massie is father to four children.
In the days since the House of Representatives returned to work in Washington the president has been hit by a wave of stunning headlines pertaining to the Epstein files. The House Oversight Committee released a batch of 20,000 emails obtained from Epstein’s estate, many mentioning Trump by name and one authored by Epstein himself claiming that the president “knew about the girls”. All of the messages were sent and received after Epstein’s 2008 conviction on child sex charges.
The White House and Trump have denied that the president had any knowledge of Epstein’s illegal activities.
In turn, Trump has upped his attacks on Massie and the other three rebel Republicans. Massie found himself inundated with attacks after Trump insinuated in a Truth Social post that Massie remarried too quickly following the death of his first wife.
“Did Thomas Massie, sometimes referred to as Rand Paul Jr., because of the fact that he always votes against the Republican Party, get married already??? Boy, that was quick!” Trump said in a post Friday on Truth Social.
“No wonder the Polls have him at less than an 8% chance of winning the Election,” Trump continued. “Anyway, have a great life Thomas and (?). His wife will soon find out that she’s stuck with a LOSER!”
Other fans of the president took things much further. Laura Loomer, a conservative headhunter who has driven loyalty purges in Trump’s second White House with his blessing, suggested on Twitter that Massie was somehow “involved” with his wife’s death.
Trump has never disavowed Loomer, and she retains his ear as an adviser. Most recently, she led an effort to lobby the administration to drop a nominee for a job at the IRS, which appeared to be successful.
In other emails released by the Oversight committee this past week Epstein wrote that he knew “how dirty Donald is”; in others he called Trump “f***ing crazy” and “borderline insane”. The sex trafficker and pedophile also boasted in one message that he was "the one able to take him down.”
The president and his allies insist that only Democrats are truly implicated in criminal activity by the Epstein emails, though they have opposed an effort by Democrats to release those files. Trump has repeatedly insisted he has done nothing wrong and knew nothing about Epstein’s crimes.
