Conservative GOP Rep. Thomas Massie Endorses Ron DeSantis For President
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
- Oops!Something went wrong.Please try again later.
WASHINGTON ― Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) endorsed Ron DeSantis for president on Wednesday, even though the Florida governor hasn’t formally announced his candidacy.
Massie’s endorsement landed a day after former President Donald Trump’s arraignment on felony charges in New York, an event many Republicans said would bolster Trump’s standing within the party.
“America needs a leader who is decisive, respects the Constitution, understands policy, puts family first, and leads by inspiring,” Massie said in a statement put out by a political action committee backing the Florida governor. “That’s why I’m endorsing Ron DeSantis for President.”
Massie is a gun-loving Republican with libertarian leanings who often bucks party leadership, but he’s not a member of the House Freedom Caucus and hasn’t been a diehard Trump supporter.
The Kentucky Republican’s endorsement doesn’t come as a surprise given his recent vocal support for DeSantis and his rocky past relationship with Trump, who once called for Massie’s ouster from the GOP but then endorsed him for reelection in 2022.
Massie irked Trump ― and most members of the House ― when in 2020, as the severity of the coronavirus pandemic set in, he tried to force a recorded vote on the pandemic relief bill that boosted unemployment benefits, sent stimulus checks to most households, and created an unprecedented business subsidy known as the Paycheck Protection Program. Massie’s move would have forced lawmakers, many of whom are older and vulnerable to severe illness, to find their way to D.C. even as health authorities told everyone else in America to stay home.
Former ambassador and current U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said at the time that Massie “tested positive for being an asshole” and “must be quarantined to prevent the spread of his massive stupidity.”
Economists have credited that bill and the others Congress passed with preventing the pandemic from causing a severe recession, though the spending likely also contributed to high inflation. This week, Massie called the March 2020 vote “the moment they screwed America.”
Last month Massie confronted Rep. Jamaal Bowman as the New York Democrat yelled at Republicans leaving the House floor for refusing to respond to school shootings. A video of the encounter went viral.
“He blocked the one exit and just tried to make a show and use 434 other members as his props in front of a bunch of cameras,” Massie told HuffPost afterward. “He said we were cowards and we didn’t have a solution. It turned out that he was afraid to actually debate a solution.”
Massie said he supports arming some teachers.
“I said, you’re surrounded by guns ― give our kids the same protection you have right here,” Massie said.
Massie praised DeSantis for signing a bill last week allowing Floridians to carry guns without a permit.
“Ron knows that putting America first means putting Americans first, not corporations,” Massie said in his endorsement, “and he’s never backed down from a fight with the big guys in pharma, agriculture, and tech.”
