President Donald Trump took direct aim at Rep. Thomas Massie, R-K.Y., during a Tuesday morning visit to Capitol Hill, blasting the Kentucky Republican as a “grandstander” who “should be voted out of office” as GOP leaders push to pass their sweeping legislative package by week’s end.
“I don’t think Thomas Massie understands government. I think he’s a grandstander,” Trump told reporters as House Speaker Mike Johnson looked on.
The president’s sharp criticism came as he attempted to shore up support for his “One Big, Beautiful Bill”, which contains many of his key priorities.
Massie, a libertarian-leaning fiscal hawk who has opposed the legislation because it would vastly increase the unsustainable federal deficit, remained defiant after Trump’s comments.
The Kentucky Republican said that cutting taxes without touching spending, of which entitlements like Medicaid and Medicare are 75 percent of government spending, is harmful. Medicaid reform is seen as necessary to offset the bill’s tax reductions.
“I don’t think he wants to talk about cutting spending,” Massie said. “He just said, ‘go after waste, fraud and abuse.’ … It means: ‘Quit talking about it, Freedom Caucus.'”
Trump made his position crystal clear during the closed-door meeting with House Republicans, telling them directly: “Don’t f*ck around with Medicaid.”
“We’re not doing any cutting of anything meaningful,” Trump later told reporters. “The only thing we’re cutting is waste, fraud and abuse.”
Massie said that Trump fundamentally opposes needed Medicaid reforms, and that doesn’t align with real spending cuts.
“He does not want to cut Medicaid. … I think he genuinely doesn’t want to cut Medicaid,” said Massie. “He probably wouldn’t take off one beneficiary who’s not an illegal alien or felon. … I don’t think he cares about work requirements. If he did, they would be real and they would kick in now.”
Despite the public clash, Trump insisted that party unity remains strong.
“It’s not a question of holdouts, we have a tremendously unified party,” he said. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a party like this. There are some people that want a couple of things that maybe I don’t like or they’re not going to get.”
The megabill includes extensions of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, elimination of taxes on tips and overtime pay, and increased spending on defense and border security. However, several issues continue to divide Republicans, including Medicaid work requirements, deficit concerns, and the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap.
The SALT cap remains a particular sticking point for Republicans from high-tax blue states. The current bill would raise the cap from $10,000 to $30,000 for incomes under $400,000, but some lawmakers view this as insufficient.
“We don’t want to benefit Democrat governors, although I would do that if it made it better,” Trump said. “We want to benefit Republicans because they are the ones that are going to Make America Great Again. Democrats are destroying our country.”
Massie acknowledged that Trump’s persuasion efforts were somewhat effective with other lawmakers.
“He probably did a pretty good job in there. Like, if his job was to go in there and convince the Freedom Caucus and the blue-state Republicans, I think he did a good job. And he made a decent effort at convincing me — directly.”
But when asked if he was bothered by being called a grandstander to his face, Massie appeared unmoved. “It’s fine … he says my hair is nicer than [Kentucky Republican Sen.] Rand Paul’s.”
House Republican leaders can only afford to lose three votes to pass the legislation with their narrow 220-213 majority. They’ve scheduled a 1 a.m. Wednesday markup of the bill in the House Rules Committee and have threatened to keep the chamber in session through Memorial Day weekend if necessary to secure passage.
Trump praised Speaker Mike Johnson amid the legislative push, calling himself a “big fan” of the Louisiana Republican.
“I don’t think there’s anybody that’s more well-suited to be speaker of the House,” he added.
If the bill clears the House, it will still need to survive the Senate before reaching Trump’s desk for his signature.
This is a hard pill for many to swallow, but I’m going to double down:
Lots of regular people like those here on X get elected to Congress.
But they get there and don’t have what it takes to work against the corrupted system… and they don’t get rich from lobbyists or trading.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) May 16, 2025