Trump touts cutting drug prices, slams fellow Republican Rep. Massie during stops in Ohio, Kentucky

HEBRON, Ky. (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday touted lowering prescription drug prices in Ohio and campaigned in the Kentucky district of Rep. Thomas Massie, calling his fellow Republican a “nutjob” he said should lose their party’s upcoming primary.

It was a full day on the road as Trump attempted to project economic and political strength even as war in Iran has scrambled financial markets and hurt his poll numbers.

Massie is one of the few remaining Republicans who has dared defy Trump in Congress, and the president took the unusual step of holding a rally in Massie’s northern Kentucky district. He gleefully told the crowd, “I just can’t stand this guy” and called him “stupid” and a “disaster.”

“We’ve got to get rid of this loser,” said Trump, who has endorsed Massie challenger Ed Gallrein in Kentucky’s primary on May 19.

The event felt like vintage Trump from his reelection bid in 2024 — so much so that he briefly called Gallrein, a farmer, businessman and retired Navy SEAL, to the stage. There, Gallrein declared, “Tom Massie stands with the ladies of ‘The View.’ Mr. President, we stand with you!”

The trip was a test of Trump’s ability to cleanse his party of those who oppose him, but also to try to stay on an economic message increasingly strained by the military action launched by the U.S. and Israel against Iran.

Polls show that Americans were increasingly wary of Trump’s handling of the economy even before the conflict began, and fighting there has derailed Trump’s messaging, as the low gas prices he once bragged about are now surging and stocks that had set record highs have slipped.

Employers also cut an unexpectedly high 92,000 jobs in February, and revisions trimmed another 69,000 jobs from December and January payrolls — which the White House had previously hailed as “blockbuster.”

Iran looms large in both Ohio and Kentucky stops

Trump’s swing began with a tour of Thermo Fisher Scientific in suburban Cincinnati. There, he discussed his administration’s efforts to persuade major manufacturers to lower prescription medication prices so that they are closer to what is charged abroad.

“I used some very strong negotiating talent to get every single country to almost immediately approve,” he told reporters.

But the president also told reporters that what was happening in Iran was “an excursion that will keep us out of a war.” He added of Tehran, “for them, it’s a war. For us, it’s turned out to be easier than we thought.”

Later, at the Kentucky rally, Trump suggested the conflict wasn’t about to end, saying, “We don’t want to leave early, do we? We’ve got to finish the job.”

He said that Iran was on the verge of rebuilding its nuclear capabilities, saying that fighting needed to continue so, “We don’t want to go back every two years.”

That contradicts many previous Trump claims and justifications for the U.S. and Israel launching strikes on Iran — not the least of which was Trump saying U.S. strikes last summer had obliterated that country’s nuclear capabilities.

Also Wednesday, Trump did an interview with Cincinnati’s WKRC-TV CBS and said he planned to tap the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, in an effort to bring down gasoline prices.

“Right now, we’ll reduce it a little bit, and that brings the prices down,” Trump said, without providing details.

That interview followed the president acknowledging during the tour of the drug factory that stock markets had been volatile as gas prices have risen, saying, “I figured we’d be hit a little bit. But, we were hit probably less than I thought.”

“We’ll be back on track in a pretty short while,” Trump said. “Prices are coming down very substantially. Oil will be coming down.”

Trump laces into Massie

At the rally, the president stressed the importance of Republicans winning the midterms, ticking off his administration’s accomplishments while telling the crowd, “The midterms are going to be very, very important to keep it going.”

But that doesn’t extend to Massie, who Trump called “the worst.”

Massie is an outspoken Trump critic who opposed the White House-backed tax and spending measure and bucked Trump by pushing to have files related to the sex trafficking investigations into Jeffrey Epstein released.

He’s also criticized the U.S. strike on Venezuela that toppled then-President Nicolás Maduro and, most recently, the war in Iran.

Massie told The Cincinnati Enquirer that Trump’s endorsement is “all my opponent has going for him.” adding that Gallrein “has promised to be a rubber stamp when he gets to Washington D.C. and I don’t think people here want a rubber stamp.”

Wednesday’s swing was part of a tour the White House said would see Trump travel the country and attempt to show that he’s taking kitchen table issues seriously and reassure voters nervous about still-rising prices and economic growth. It followed Democrats pushing the message that the everyday cost of living remained too high and winning the Virginia and New Jersey governors’ races in November.

Since then, the president has made stops in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Texas — though his speeches have sometimes been more focused on his own political grievances than on his plans to help lower everyday costs across the country.

Even on Wednesday, Trump spent long stretches mocking his Democratic predecessor, President Joe Biden, and even slammed California Gov. Gavin Newsom for publicly talking about his dyslexia, saying “I don’t want the president of the United States to have a cognitive deficiency.”

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This story has been updated to fix the name of the local Ohio newspaper. It is The Cincinnati Enquirer, not the Cincinnati Inquirer.

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Weissert contributed from Washington. Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed from Washington.

Will Weissert And Sagar Meghani, The Associated Press