Written by Matt Morgan, Editor at The Daily Bell:
The Kentucky Fourth District primary has been described as a fight between Donald Trump and Thomas Massie, as a referendum on the Iran war, as a test of the Israel lobby, and as the most expensive House race in American history. All of those descriptions are true. None of them are the actual choice on the ballot.
The actual choice, described by the congressman himself, is whether men whose names appear in Jeffrey Epstein’s contact books can purchase the removal of the congressman trying to release the rest of those books.
https://twitter.com/GBX_Press/status/2056435212318343581
Thomas Massie exposed a hidden Epstein list and called out Kash Patel for lying to the American people.
Massie says the FBI is sitting on files that name 20 other men tied to Epstein’s sex trafficking operation; including a high-profile government official. They had this list… pic.twitter.com/oujkuxKrt7
— Irlandarra (@martinez_j7902) May 18, 2026
In May of 2022, Donald Trump issued a written endorsement of Thomas Massie. The full text is still on Massie’s campaign site. Massie was, in Trump’s own words, a “Conservative Warrior,” a “first-rate Defender of the Constitution,” and a man who “fights hard to Protect your Liberties.”
He had Trump’s “Complete and Total Endorsement.”
In May of 2026, the same Donald Trump cut a video calling Massie the worst congressman in the history of our country, an obstructionist, a fool, and a “disloyal, ungracious and sanctimonious” man who must be driven from office. He mentioned Massie three times in his endorsement of Massie’s opponent and mispronounced the opponent’s name.
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2056466848934248699
Massie is the same congressman. He has the same Liberty Index score, the same constitutional voting record, the same district. What changed in the intervening four years is straightforward. Massie joined the discharge petition forcing a House vote on the release of the Epstein files. The president did not want that vote held.
That is the entire substance of the reversal. A constitutional conservative becomes the worst congressman in American history at the precise moment he tries to force daylight onto a list of names. There is no other variable…
The race has set a national record. Outside groups have spent more than thirty-two million dollars trying to determine the outcome, almost all of it against Massie. The Republican Jewish Coalition has spent around four million, AIPAC’s super PAC around 2.6 million, and the Trump-aligned MAGA KY PAC roughly 7.5 million, funded in large part by three named billionaires: Paul Singer, John Paulson, and a group linked to Miriam Adelson.
In September 2025, Massie named John Paulson specifically as the donor “in Epstein’s black book.” Paulson is a Trump megadonor worth four billion dollars who hosted the president’s record-setting fifty-million-dollar Palm Beach fundraiser in April 2024. His name appears in both of Epstein’s contact books, the 2015 one published by Gawker and the 2021 one published by Business Insider. Paulson’s spokesman responded that the billionaire never shared a meal with Epstein, never visited his residences, never flew on his plane, and never went to the island. The spokesman did not address the contact books.
The thing being asked here is not whether Paulson is implicated in any criminal conduct. He may not be. The thing being asked is why a billionaire whose name is in Jeffrey Epstein’s address book is putting two million dollars into ads to remove the congressman who wants Epstein’s address book released. The asymmetry between the stated grievance, that Massie voted no on a budget, and the actual expenditure, requires an explanation. The most economical explanation is the one nobody wants to print.
Ed Gallrein has not held public office. He lost a state senate race in 2024. He has declined to participate in the public debate on Kentucky Educational Television. He has, in his own words, pledged to stand “100% behind the president.” He is, by every available account, a decent man and a former Navy officer who would not have run for this seat without being asked. He was asked by the White House.
Were Gallrein to win on Tuesday, the votes that follow on the Epstein files question would be predictable, because his only stated commitment is loyalty to the executive that recruited him. The discharge petition would be one signature shorter. Lauren Boebert, who also signed the petition, has already been threatened with a primary of her own for campaigning with Massie.
The president who built a political movement on the promise of releasing what the elites were hiding is now using AIPAC money, Paulson money, Adelson money, and a sitting Defense Secretary to remove the congressman trying to release what the elites are hiding. The Republican Party, which markets itself as the populist resistance to the donor class, is acting as the donor class’s enforcement arm. The word “America First” is being used to mean “the men in the book first.”
Massie may survive Tuesday or he may not. Either way, the answer to the question the comedy circuit has been asking, whether voters would rather elect the man who wants Epstein’s friends in handcuffs or the man funded by Epstein’s friends, has already been provided by the people writing the checks.
They have told you who they think should win. They have told you why.
Now we’re here to watch who wins.
