The Republican Lightning Rod Dividing MAGA

In normal times, few would dare call a politician who made international headlines for a family Christmas card featuring him, his wife and children holding AR-15s a fake Republican.

But these aren't normal times. And Thomas Massie isn't a typical politician.

Ahead of a Republican-led vote to censure Democrat Adam Schiff for his leading role in investigating former President Donald Trump for his alleged collusion with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign, Massie was one of the first Republicans to publicly state he would not support the effort, and that he believed efforts to fine Schiff for half the cost of the $32 million investigation was unconstitutional.

His on-record statements quickly drew the ire of many of the former president's supporters, earning him allegations of being a "RINO" (Republican In Name Only) and calls for a primary challenge against him. Those who know Massie, however, should not have been surprised.

The Kentucky Republican has regularly been a lightning rod in Congress: an outspoken critic of mask and vaccine mandates at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, a fierce defender of gun rights, and a staunch anti-interventionist, making headlines in 2019 as the lone member of Congress not to support a resolution condemning Russia's illegal annexation of neighboring Crimea alongside his lone 2016 vote declining to impose sanctions on Iran.

He also has a strong libertarian streak, and regularly votes guided by the principle of less government, less regulation is generally better: he's run legislation to abolish the Department of Education and, in his early days in Congress, garnered a reputation for regularly voting against even the most mundane legislation that crossed his desk, earning him the moniker "Mr. No" from outlets like Politico.

"For those that don't know me, what I did this week might seem off-brand," he told Newsweek in an interview. "But for those who do know me, what I did this week is my brand."

Politically, he knew voting to table the censure resolution would be a challenging one.

Schiff, Massie said, was "the devil incarnate" to the Republican base, and he personally believed he'd performed unethical acts during his time under the previous Democratic majority. But that didn't mean he believed the punishment against him was warranted. A $16 million fine, Massie believed, would have bankrupted Schiff, and would have amounted to a de facto expulsion from the House. And the GOP's slim majority in Congress, he said, fell well short of giving them that right.

"When people calm down and look back at this, they're going to see it clearly can't work," he said. "A simple majority of the House can't fine somebody $16 million. That's practically evicting them from the chamber. And the Constitution says that it requires two-thirds vote to evict somebody from the chamber. Just practically speaking, this would have been an end run on the Constitution."

Others didn't see it that way.

While Massie said he entertained the idea of quietly voting to support the motion to table the censure resolution, he instead decided to go public with his decision early and await the firestorm to come. He knew what to expect; prior to a 2020 vote on COVID-19 relief funding at the start of the pandemic, Massie drew ire from members of both parties for attempting to delay a vote on the bill, drawing calls from President Trump for Kentucky voters to throw Massie out of Congress.

Wednesday's vote, he said, elicited a similar response.

"When I came into the office and we were about to fire up the phones and start taking calls, I told the interns to hunker down like mules in a hailstorm," Massie told Newsweek in an interview. "They found out what that means."

For eight hours, a team of three interns and some senior staff fielded a nonstop stream of phone calls from Republicans across the country urging him to support the censure resolution. Many were spurred by social media influencers like Rogan O'Handley who called into former Trump adviser Steve Bannon's popular 'War Room' podcast urging listeners to flood his and other Republicans' phone lines with appeals to censure Schiff.

"I don't know why anyone's even hesitating on this," he told Bannon. "This is a guy that for years tormented the American people with this farce. [...] Adam Schiff knew it was a farce. He weaponized his position to, you know, bog down the government to go after President Trump. He needs to be held accountable."

And the blowback after the vote was immediate.

One individual, onetime Kentucky gubernatorial candidate Eric Deters, announced Thursday he was increasingly likely to mount a challenge against him, specifically citing Massie's decision to align himself with 19 moderate Republicans to block the censure vote and his vocal support of Trump rival Ron DeSantis in the 2024 GOP primary for president.

"Thomas Massie and the other 19 who voted to let Adam Schiff off the hook for lying and lying about Russian collusion, those people are absolutely wrong," Steve Gruber, a host on far-right network 'Real America's Voice,' said of Massie's vote. "[...] It's an indefensible position to take for Thomas Massie to take."

Others recalled the Tea Party candidate's calls for his fellow insurgent colleagues to back down from attacking fellow Kentuckian Mitch McConnell during their insurgency against moderate Republican leadership in the early 2010s when McConnell and others were facing primary threats. (Massie, notably, did not endorse McConnell or his primary opponent during his 2014 re-election bid, while Trump was a major supporter of McConnell's). And after the vote Thursday, former Trump budget director Russell Vought took to Bannon's podcast to accuse Massie of working to create a bad omnibus bill that conservatives in the House would not be able to stop that contained similar concessions to Democrats and the Biden White House the party's hardliners had previously opposed.

Some of the former president's staunchest supporters in Congress, however, have been lining up solidly behind Massie in recent days. Shortly after the contentious debt limit vote, Congressional Trump ally Matt Gaetz pushed back on Bannon's calls to launch a primary challenge against Massie, saying "Congress is a better place with Thomas in it."

Others, like Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, took to social media to support Massie's decision not to support the censure resolution against Schiff, saying that while she voted against the motion to table in an effort to hear the debate, she supported Massie's rationale: that he believed Congress did not have a right to dock a lawmakers' pay over a political disagreement.

Massie "is undeserving of the internet pitchforks that are built on the uninformed or misinformed foundations of pressure campaigns," she wrote, noting he and other members of Congress were planning to vote for a new version of the censure resolution that removed the language penalizing Schiff for what Massie said was eight times the California Congressman's net worth.

Massie told Newsweek he believed the pressure he faced stemmed from a larger loss of respect for nuance within the Republican base—an outgrowth of the "post-constitutional Twitter mob" he said emerged in the era of social media. While he favored censuring Schiff, Massie said the nuance of why he couldn't support the bill was largely irrelevant to many of his critics, drawing calls for his head even when he agreed with them.

"If you can't explain [your position] with a picture and three letters, you're wrong," he told Newsweek.

Publicly, Massie has already committed to supporting another effort to censure Schiff, telling the resolution's sponsor, freshman Florida Republican Anna Paulina Luna, that he would gladly support another censure resolution against Schiff once it came across his desk. Just without the provisions that would drive him into bankruptcy.

"I signed up for the ass whipping," he said. "And instead of waiting and making excuses afterwards, I was trying to instruct people on why it was a bad vote. And I think that may have given others cover to take the right vote."

Update 06/20/23 1:28 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information.