Kentucky is now the epicenter of Republican infighting ahead of next year’s elections, from a White House-backed primary challenge against a sitting congressmember to a tense Senate primary.
As one Trumpworld operative put it: “It’s a Kentucky fried food fight.”
President Donald Trump’s war with Rep. Thomas Massie is the headliner — at least so far. The White House has been trying to make an example of Massie, who has opposed just about every one of Trump’s top legislative priorities. Earlier this week, a MAGA super PAC run by Chris LaCivita — Trump’s 2024 co-campaign manager — started a million-dollar TV ad buy in Massie’s district, hitting him for voting against the “big, beautiful bill,” a source with knowledge of the ad buy told NOTUS.
“If you’re looking at it from a campaign strategy, it doesn’t make sense to run ads a year before the race,” Massie told NOTUS. “So the question is, what are they trying to achieve with that? I think part of it’s desperation over the ‘big, beautiful bill,’ and they’re trying to make sure they don’t have any defectors in the House on the ‘big, beautiful bill’ as it gets turned into crap in the Senate.”
The ads don’t mention any specific challenger to Massie, as his opponents don’t have one yet, but instead claim that Massie supports “sex changes for minors” and urge voters to “fire Thomas Massie.”
But the hunt is on for a candidate Trump can support.
One White House official told NOTUS that they have possibilities “narrowed” to “a very short list.” Additionally, they said they believe Massie won’t pose a challenge because “polling shows he’s imminently beatable.”
“Just need a warm body … honestly,” the official said.
Massie said he isn’t concerned at all about Trump attempting to challenge him.
“It is what it is,” Massie said. “It’s definitely a waste of money.”
However, Trumpworld is dead set on seeing Massie ousted from Congress and ensuring that Republicans know that if you oppose Trump, his operation will come after you.
“Massie is a dead man walking in Kentucky,” the Trumpworld operative told NOTUS. “When all is said and done, the only Kentucky political figure who will be more unpopular than Massie is Mitch McConnell.”
Which leads to the other brawl brewing in Kentucky: the race to replace the retiring McConnell.
Currently, three Republicans have thrown their hats in the ring to run for Senate in Kentucky: businessman Nate Morris, Rep. Andy Barr and former Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron.
Each candidate is trying to run away from McConnell and toward Trump. And much like primaries in safe red states in the past, each candidate is going to try to get the endorsement that could seal their fate and make them a senator.
This was evident on Thursday, when Morris announced his candidacy on Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast and announced a rally with Charlie Kirk, one of Trump’s top allies, next week in Kentucky.
Immediately after announcing his campaign, Morris began trashing McConnell.
“It’s garbage day in Kentucky, and thanks to Mitch McConnell, things have gotten dirty. It’s time to dump career politicians and take out of the trash,” Morris said when announcing his candidacy on X.
However, each candidate has past statements and stances that make them vulnerable as they jockey for Trump’s endorsement.
Morris’ opponents are already starting to attack his record as a CEO. Cameron has spent the hours following Morris’ announcement criticizing him for how he ran his company, particularly for dedicating resources to environmental, social, and governance issues, known as ESG, which have become a boogeyman for Republicans.
Morris did previously say that one of his company’s goals was “meeting the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance.”
Cameron also attacked Morris for supporting diversity, equity and inclusion at his companies and signing the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge, calling it “the largest CEO-driven business commitment to advance diversity and inclusion within the workplace in the world.”
“One of the lessons I learned firsthand at Rubicon that will inform how I handle things in the US Senate is that if you give the left even an inch, they will always try to take a mile,” Morris told NOTUS in a statement. “My experience at my former company has totally radicalized me against ESG and DEI and I’m going to make it my mission to end this crap once and for all.”
Cameron also hit Morris for defending the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, when he said, “The protests we are seeing are a manifestation of the pain and anger that so many are feeling.”
“I was horrified by the Summer of riots that followed the death of George Floyd. I pushed backed hard against pressure from employees and refused to endorse BLM or donate even a penny to their movement, unlike so many other corporations who caved to pressure from leftists,” Morris said in a statement in response to Cameron’s attacks. “In the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death I was trying to be empathetic to my employees who were struggling with what happened, but I refused to endorse "#blacklivesmatter” in my statement because as we all saw with our own eyes in the following months, BLM is nothing more than a domestic terror organization.”
Cameron, in turn, is facing blowback over his long support of McConnell. Cameron has called McConnell a “friend,” a “mentor,” and said, “I don’t have anything I’ve probably disagreed with him on.”
“When I first met him, I knew he was somebody I wanted to emulate,” Cameron said in 2015.
Cameron has also been hit on his record as attorney general of Kentucky, where he supported getting rid of cash bail, saying, “We want to move to a no-money bail system.”
In addition to wanting to end cash bail, Cameron advocated for a bail reform bill that prosecutors called “one of the most haphazard, dangerous bills” they had seen.
Cameron did not respond to a request for comment.
Then there is Barr, who has been in Congress since 2013 and in the past routinely referred to McConnell as his “mentor.”
Barr has been hit by his opponents for his past opposition to Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship during the president’s first term.
“The Constitution is clear,” Barr said of Trump’s efforts to end birthright citizenship in 2018. “The Constitution cannot be changed by an executive order.”
In 2018, Barr also bragged about standing up to Trump’s tariffs, saying during a debate that he is the “co-sponsor of a bill that the administration opposes” that would “give Congress authority over tariffs and trade deals.”
“Andy Barr chaired Trump’s 2024 campaign in Kentucky, always voted for the MAGA agenda, and endorsed President Trump three times,” a spokesperson for Barr said in a statement. “Daniel Cameron lost with Trump’s endorsement in a red state and Nate Morris donated only to Nikki Haley in the 2024 primary. This race is a no brainer.”
At the time of Morris’ donation to Nikki Haley’s super PAC in 2021, she had said she had no intention to run for president, and it came a month after Haley publicly stated she wouldn’t run if Trump ran for president. Morris’ wife told The Wall Street Journal that they only made the donation so she could go to a donor event and meet Haley and ask her to sign a letter for her uncle, who was dying of brain cancer.
Between the Senate primary fight and the Trump-backed challenge to Massie, Republicans are set to spend months bashing each other in the state. And once again, there’s one person at the center of it all: Trump.
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Reese Gorman is a reporter at NOTUS.