(CNN) — Before Republican Sen. Thom Tillis bucked his own party and voted against President Donald Trump’s agenda last week, he warned the president how its toxic political ripple effect could soon wipe out Congress’ GOP majority.
“As I told the president, if we don’t get this right, he’s probably going to have two of the most miserable years of his life if Democrats take the gavels in the House. And I’m trying to avoid that,” Tillis said in a wide-ranging interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday – his first national sitdown interview since announcing his retirement a day after voting to block the president’s agenda.
“I told the president, I really do believe it could be his Obamacare,” Tillis said of the sweeping tax and spending cuts package that Trump signed into law last week, without Tillis’ vote. “I think it’s politically just devastating.”
The plainspoken North Carolinian was clear about who he blames for the details of that law, repeatedly calling out unnamed White House staffers that he said failed to grasp the real-life consequences of the new policy, particularly the spending cuts to Medicaid, which provides health care to millions of low-income Americans. Those advisers, he said, are the “biggest risk to [Trump’s] legacy” — though he declined, for now, to identify any by name.
“I don’t have a problem with President Trump. I got a problem with some of the people I consider to be amateurs advising him. And I want to make it very clear to them: When you act like the president when he’s out of the room, you don’t impress me,” Tillis said.
The senator may not be quiet for long. Asked about how he planned to spend his remaining 18 months in office, Tillis said he would demand accountability for some of those same Trump advisers.
“I am going to hold some of these people accountable, who I think are shielding him, who do not understand the legislative process, certainly do not understand the executive. And they’re the biggest risk to his legacy,” Tillis told Tapper.
The swing-state Republican had multiple issues with Trump’s agenda. But it’s the cuts to Medicaid that’s drawn his sharpest rebuke, and which eventually led him to vote against the sprawling package. Tillis had repeatedly urged Trump and his team not to cut so deeply into the program, which he feared would cut off access to people who legally qualify for the program and cause Trump’s downfall — just like then-President Barack Obama’s health care law that led to Democrats’ self-described “shellacking” in the 2010 midterms.
But in the end, GOP leaders passed their bill without Tillis’ help, spurring Trump himself to publicly threaten to help primary the senator. In response, Tillis recalled sending the president a private missive of his own — just before announcing he would retire from Congress instead of seeking reelection next November.
“I told the president in another text: ‘Now’s the time to start looking for my replacement because I don’t deal with that kind of bullsh*t,” Tillis recounted.
Concerns over Trump’s nominees – including Hegseth
Tillis has helped confirm nearly all of Trump’s key nominees this term. But with hindsight, Tillis raised concerns with one of those now in power: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The senator suggested he would not vote to confirm Hegseth, if a vote were to be held again today.
“With the passing of time, I think it’s clear he’s out of his depth as a manager of a large, complex organization,” Tillis said, pointing, for instance, to Hegseths’ recent failure to inform the White House before he authorized a pause on weapons shipments to Ukraine last week.
“The whole idea of having a pause on Ukraine defensive arms, that’s just amateurish,” Tillis said.
Asked by Tapper whether he would vote to confirm Hegseth knowing what he does now, Tilis said: “Now, I have the information of him being a manager and I don’t think his probationary period has been very positive.”
The high-stakes race for a replacement
Tillis offered another clear warning to his party about next November: Keep scandal-plagued Republican Mark Robinson out of the GOP’s race to replace him in the Senate.
“There’s no way if he became the nominee in North Carolina I could possibly support him,” Tillis said of Robinson, the former lieutenant governor who suffered a historic defeat in 2024 after a CNN KFile investigation found he made dozens of lewd comments on an online porn forum. “Of course I wouldn’t support the Democratic nominee. I would just have to take a pass.”
And notably, Tillis was tight-lipped when asked about another possible candidate — Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law and former co-chair of the Republican National Committee.
“Our state is very difficult for Republicans to win. … So they need to be really smart about the name on the ballot and the profile on the ballot to have an opportunity to win,” Tilis said when specifically asked about Lara Trump. “This is gonna be a tough race for someone. They need a good, solid, business, right-of-center conservative to match up against whoever it is.”
Tillis’ path from trailer park to US Senate
When Tillis made his stunning decision late last month to not seek reelection, he called out DC politicians who “don’t bother to do the hard work” to understand what their policies would mean for someone like a young person living in a trailer park – a reference to his own humble beginnings.
Tillis has been a waiter, a warehouse worker, and even, once, as an 8-year-old kid who got paid in biscuits, a walker of an elderly neighbor’s cat. (Yes, a cat.)
He said he thought about those living in his former trailer park in Nashville when he decided to vote against Trump’s agenda. Again, he compared it to the 2010 health care law that led to a massive red wave after some people were forced off their private health plans.
“Now it’s like, if you like Medicaid and you’re eligible, you can keep it. That’s fundamentally untrue,” Tillis said. Asked if many of those who will be impacted understand what’s in Trump’s bill, Tillis said: “No, they don’t, but they will” — referring to the Democrats’ plans to broadly message the GOP cuts ahead of the midterms.
“If you’re a competent Democrat, you’re going to figure out how to communicate to them how it affects their lives. And it almost certainly will,” he said.
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