Rep. Thomas Massie used his Kentucky Republican primary concession speech to accuse Fox News of keeping him off the conservative network during his feud with President Donald Trump. The criticism came hours into the election after Fox invited him to appear on
Rep. Thomas Massie walked onto the stage for his concession speech on Tuesday night with a message that sounded less like an afterthought and more like a last word: Fox News, he said, shut him out—until it didn’t.
In Kentucky’s Republican primary, Massie had lost. He fell to Trump-endorsed Ed Gallrein. a result that quickly read as a referendum on how much sway Trump still holds in a party Massie has challenged at times during his years in Congress. Massie’s defeat. in a race where he had become a lightning rod. came after he had drawn Trump’s wrath for voting against Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and for joining a push to make the Jeffrey Epstein files public.
Then came the line that drew boos.
“By the way, after 18 months of a blackout of not letting me on Fox, they finally let me on Fox today, four hours into the election,” Massie told the crowd during the concession speech.
He added that Fox’s critics would recognize the pattern. “Their slop is selling, so they’ll keep selling it. But listen, I got to watch Fox also for the first time in 18 months.”
A Fox News spokesperson said early Wednesday that the network had invited Massie to be a guest on “Fox News Live” in June 2025, and that he declined.
Massie’s claim lands in a larger. unresolved fight over who gets platformed inside the modern Republican coalition—and what happens when a member of Congress becomes politically inconvenient to Trump’s preferred media ecosystem. Even as the speech focused on network access. the context around the accusation was hard to miss: Massie’s feud with President Donald Trump has been public. and the stakes of his primary were equally blunt.
The friction escalated again this week outside Kentucky’s campaign trail. In a rare post on Monday on X, Trump called Massie the “Worst Congressman in the History of our Country.”
Massie didn’t wait to respond. On Tuesday, he appeared on “America’s Newsroom,” after host Bill Hemmer said Trump had called him a “terrible congressman” in earlier comments covered by Fox News.
Massie defended his voting record, arguing that—despite his disputes—he has usually sided with Trump “for the most part.”
As Kentucky’s primary result settled in, Massie’s concession speech turned into something else: a complaint about visibility, timing, and influence—delivered in the same moment he accepted that Trump-endorsed Ed Gallrein had carried the day.
Thomas Massie Fox News Kentucky Republican primary Ed Gallrein Donald Trump America’s Newsroom Fox News Live Big Beautiful Bill Jeffrey Epstein files X