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FIRST ON FOX – A former Navy SEAL and fifth-generation Kentucky farmer who is endorsed by President Donald Trump declared his candidacy Tuesday in the state's 4th Congressional District as he challenges Republican Rep. Thomas Massie in next year's Republican primary.
“I have dedicated my life to serving my country and I am ready to answer the call again,” Ed Gallrein said in a statement first shared with Fox News Digital.
And pointing to Massie, a frequent Republican critic of the president during his second term in the White House, Gallrein emphasized: “This district is Trump country. The president doesn't need obstacles in Congress; he needs support. I will defeat Thomas Massie, stand shoulder to shoulder with President Trump, and deliver the America First results Kentuckians voted for.”
The campaign launch comes four days after Trump took to social media to praise Gallrein, urge him to run and criticize Massie.
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Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., arrives at a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump argued that Massie was a “third-rate congressman,” a “weak and pathetic RINO” and a “totally ineffective LOSER who has failed us so much.”
And the president applauded Gallrein, calling him a “brave combat veteran” and a “very successful businessman” who, if elected to Congress, would “fight tirelessly to keep our now very secure border, SECURE, stop immigration crime and defend our Second Amendment, always under siege.”
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Trump's social media post included a photo of him and Gallrein wearing red MAGA hats in the Oval Office.
Gallrein served three decades in uniform, achieving the rank of Captain. According to his campaign biography, he served multiple times with SEAL Team SIX, deploying to Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq, and earned four Bronze Stars and two Presidential Unit Citations.
Ed Gallrein, left, seen with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House, launched a congressional bid Tuesday to challenge Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky in the primary. Gallrein's campaign launch comes four days after Trump endorsed him and urged him to run. (Ed Gallrein Congressional Campaign)
His campaign statement also noted that Gallrein's “roots run deep in Kentucky.” He was born and raised in the state. And his family, who has farmed for more than a century, built Kentucky's largest dairy farm and Gallrein Grain Farms, one of the largest grain operations in the state.
Massie took aim at Gallrein following Trump's endorsement on social media, calling him a “failed candidate and establishment pirate” while pointing to Gallrein's failed bid last year for the state Senate.
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“After being rebuffed by every elected official in the 4th District, Trump's consultants clearly hit the panic button with their choice of failed candidate and establishment hack Ed Gallrein,” Massie said in a statement to Politico. “Ed has been begging them to elect him for over three months.”
Trump began targeting Massie to unseat him earlier this year over the seven-term lawmaker's opposition to the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which passed the GOP-controlled Congress earlier this summer almost entirely along partisan lines. The sweeping Republican megalaw is the president's biggest legislative achievement since he returned to the White House.
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) speaks with Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA) during a press conference with alleged victims of disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein outside the US Capitol on September 3, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Massie is also leading the effort, along with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California, to force a House vote to urge the release of Justice Department files on the late convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, a move the White House and House Republican leaders have sought to counter. Massie is close to reaching the 218 signatures needed to force the vote.
Two top Trump political advisers, 2024 campaign co-chairman Chris LaCivita and pollster Tony Fabrizio, launched a super PAC in June that aims to defeat Massie. Nearly $2 million has already been spent to run television ads targeting Massie.
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But Massie has used attacks from Trump and his allies to boost fundraising, raising more than $750,000 in the past three months, which was the best fundraising quarter of his congressional career.
Massie's district, in the northeastern part of the state, includes the eastern suburbs of Louisville and the Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati.
