Conservative Republican Rep. Thomas Massie Endorses Ron DeSantis for President

WASHINGTON – Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) endorsed Ron DeSantis for president on Wednesday, even though the Florida governor has not formally announced his candidacy.

Massie’s endorsement came a day after the former president donald trumparraignment of felony charges in New York, an event that many republicans he said it would strengthen Trump’s position within the party.

“America needs a leader who is decisive, upholds the Constitution, understands politics, puts family first and leads by inspiring,” Massie said in a statement. statement issued by a political action committee that supports the governor of Florida. “That’s why I support Ron DeSantis for president.”

Massie is a gun-loving Republican with libertarian leanings who often opposes the party’s leadership, but he is not a member of the House Freedom Caucus and has not been a staunch supporter of Trump.

The Kentucky Republican’s endorsement comes as no surprise given his recent vocal support for DeSantis and his rocky past relationship with Trump, who once called for Massie’s removal from the GOP. but then he supported it for re-election in 2022.

Massie riled Trump, and most members of the House, when in 2020, as the severity of the coronavirus pandemic began, he tried to force a recorded vote on the pandemic relief bill that increased benefits for unemployment, sent stimulus checks to most households, and created an unprecedented business subsidy known as the Paycheck Protection Program. Massie’s move would have forced lawmakers, many of whom are older and vulnerable to serious illness, to find their way to DC even as health authorities told everyone else in the United States to stay home.

Former US Ambassador and Current Climate Envoy John Kerry said at the time that Massie “tested positive for idiot” and “must be quarantined to prevent the spread of his massive stupidity.”

That bill and others passed by Congress have been credited by economists with preventing the pandemic from causing a severe recession, though the spending likely also contributed to high inflation. This week, Massie called the March 2020 vote “The moment they screwed over America.”

Last month, Massie faced off against Rep. Jamaal Bowman as the New York Democrat. yelled at the republicans leave the House floor for refusing to respond to the school shootings. A video of the encounter went viral.

“He blocked the only exit and tried to put on a show and use 434 other members as props in front of a bunch of cameras,” Massie told HuffPost afterwards. “He said that we were cowards and that we had no solution. It turned out that he was afraid to discuss a solution ”.

Massie said she supports arming some teachers.

“I said, you are surrounded by guns, give our children the same protection that you have here,” Massie said.

Massie praised DeSantis for signing a bill last week allowing Floridians to carry guns without a permit.

“Ron knows that putting America first means putting Americans first, not corporations,” Massie said in his endorsement, “and he has never backed down from a fight with the big names in pharmaceutical, agricultural and tech.”