Rep Thomas Massie indicates he’s now ‘America only’ rather than ‘America First’

Rep. Thomas Massie – A Republican fiscal hawk facing off against a president Supported by Donald Trump Kentucky’s top contender – previously described himself as “America first,” but now says he believes he’s “America only.”

“I’m tired of sending money abroad,” he told Fox News Digital during an interview Thursday.

“I’m tired of foreign beef being preferred over U.S.-grown beef,” he continued. “I’m ready to just be America. And I think all members of Congress should be that way.”

Massie gave Trump a mixed review, saying the president is America first on “some” fronts.

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Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, before a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, September 3, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“But when it comes to beef, he’s not America first. And when it comes to sending money abroad to Ukraine and Israel, I think he needs to go back to his campaign promises and put America first. Because we’re not going to make America great again by sending our money abroad,” Massie said.

Massie pointed to the “biggest disagreement” between him and the Trump administration and the Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike JohnsonR-La., is the increase in spending.

“I mean I thought we were conservative. Why are we spending more this year than Joe Biden spent in his last year? In fact, we’re spending about $200 billion more,” he said, adding that the result “is inflation and higher interest rates.”

“And people feel it,” Massey added. “You can’t gaslight them.” “You can’t tell them things are getting cheaper when they’re not getting cheaper.”

In a statement to Fox News Digital, White House spokesman Kush Desai accused Massey of “fake math.”

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Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., talks about his national debt button before President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, February 7, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Here are the facts: President Trump’s Working Families Tax Cut Act reduced mandatory spending by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, and the budget deficit from April to September of this year fell by Amazing 40% Compared to last year, when Joe Biden was president, Desai announced in the statement.

“Instead of bogus math, Thomas Massie should be thinking about how he betrayed his constituents and hard-working Americans when he voted with every Democrat against the largest tax cut for working families in American history, including no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime pay, increased child tax credits, and a continuation of the 2017 Trump tax cuts,” he added.

Massie said his other disagreements with what’s happening in D.C. are “secondary” to the spending issue.

“I would say we need to follow through on some of our campaign promises,” he said. “For example, releasing the Epstein files.”

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Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., have been leading an effort to force the House to vote on a proposal that would force the release of materials related to Jeffrey Epstein.

they Discharge solicitation It collected 217 of the 218 signatures needed to force a vote, but Democratic Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, who said she would sign, has not yet been sworn into office more than six weeks after winning a special election in Arizona.

Massey claimed that Johnson “did everything in his power to avoid this vote,” stressing that the Speaker of Parliament was not sworn in because she “represents the 218th signature I need to force a vote on the release of the Epstein files.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to Johnson’s office for comment.

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Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, during a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, September 3, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Massie, who owns cattle himself, said the president “dealt a devastating blow to ranchers and … ranchers” in the United States.

during Statements aboard Air Force One Last month, Trump indicated that the United States was considering buying beef from Argentina to lower prices.

Days later Reuters reported A White House official indicated that the administration is quadrupling the country’s imports of low-tariff beef from the South American country. Increasing the tariff rate quota to 80,000 metric tons will allow Argentina to send larger quantities of the product to America at a lower duty rate, according to the outlet.

The president has Massie in his political crosshairs — repeatedly cursing the congressman on Truth Social.

In a Monday post, Trump referred to Massie as a “weak, pathetic Reno” — a pejorative shorthand that stands for “Republican in Name Only.” He also called the congressman a “totally ineffective loser,” while expressing support for his primary challenger, Ed Gallerin, who Trump is backing in the race.

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President Donald Trump waits for Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to arrive at the White House on October 20, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Kevin Deitch/Getty Images)

Even as the president tries to persuade voters in Kentucky’s 4th Congressional District to reject Massie, the lawmaker said he has no regrets about endorsing Trump ahead of the 2024 election, noting that former Vice President Kamala Harris would have been a complete “disaster.”

Massie initially supported Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the Republican presidential primary, but DeSantis withdrew and later supported Trump, and Massie It supported the Republican juggernaut also.

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He said: “I am happy that President Trump won.”

Trump has “done a lot of good things,” he said, adding that many of them were done through executive order, and he believes Congress should vote on more issues so the president’s moves are not just “temporary measures.”

Asked if he had any interest in running for president himself, Massie said he was not interested.