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FIRST ON FOX — A longtime former Navy SEAL and fifth-generation Kentucky farmer backed by President Donald Trump declared his candidacy in the state’s 4th Congressional District on Tuesday, as he challenges Republican Rep. Thomas Massie in next year’s GOP 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 GOP critic of the president during his second term in the White House, Gallrein emphasized, “This district is Trump country.
The campaign launch comes four days after Trump praised Gallrein on social media, urging him to run and lambasting Massie.
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Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, arrives for a press conference in front of the United States Capitol in Washington, DC, Wednesday, September 3, 2025. (Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Trump argued that Massie was a “third-rate congressman,” a “weak, pathetic RINO” and a “totally ineffective LOSER who has let us down so badly.”
And the president applauded Gallrein, calling him a “brave combat veteran” and a “highly successful businessman” who, if elected to Congress, would “fight tirelessly to maintain our now very secure border, SECURE, end migrant crime, and defend our still-embattled Second Amendment.”
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Trump’s social media post included a photo of him and Gallrein holding red MAGA hats in the Oval Office.
Gallrein served three decades in uniform, reaching the rank of captain. According to his campaign biography, he served multiple times on SEAL Team SIX, deployed 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 Thomas Massie of Kentucky. Gallrein’s campaign launch comes four days after Trump endorsed him and urged him to run. (Ed Gallrein’s 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, which has farmed for more than a century, built Kentucky’s largest dairy farm and Gallrein Grain Farms, one of the state’s largest grain farms.
Massie took aim at Gallrein after Trump’s support on social media, calling him a “failed candidate and a hack of the establishment” while pointing out Gallrein’s failed bid last year for the state Senate.
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“After being rejected by every elected official in the 4th District, Trump’s consultants clearly pushed 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 pick him for over three months now.”
Trump began targeting Massie for ouster earlier this year because of the seven-term lawmaker’s opposition to the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which was passed by the GOP-controlled Congress earlier this summer almost entirely along party lines. The Republican Party’s radical megalaw constitutes the president’s main legislative achievement since his return to the White House.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) speaks with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) during a press conference with alleged victims of disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein outside the U.S. Capitol on September 3, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Massie is also leading the campaign, alongside Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California, to force a vote in the House of Representatives to request the release of Justice Department files on late 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 a vote.
Two top Trump political advisers — 2024 campaign co-manager 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 air television ads targeting Massie.
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But Massie used attacks from Trump and his allies to boost fundraising, raising more than $750,000 over the past three months in what was the best fundraising quarter of his congressional career.
The Massie District, in the northeastern part of the state, includes the eastern suburbs of Louisville and the Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati.
