Senate GOP not happy with Trump beatdown of Tillis 

Republican senators aren't happy about how President Trump treated Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), whom the president blasted last week on social media after Tillis said he wouldn’t vote for Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

Tillis is highly regarded among colleagues as a team player focused on getting results, and many Republicans thought he would have had the best chance of keeping the North Carolina Senate seat in GOP hands.

Senate Republicans are expressing disappointment over Tillis’s sudden retirement announcement, which came after Trump tore into him on social media and publicly solicited other Republicans to run for North Carolina’s Senate seat in 2026.  

“I do think it was totally unnecessary,” one Republican senator who requested anonymity said of Trump’s rough treatment of Tillis on social media.

“I just don’t think it really achieves anything good to come after somebody just because they disagree with you,” the senator added.

The lawmaker said that Tillis was in regular touch with Trump and Senate GOP leadership to express his concerns about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law on July 4.

“He was talking to him the whole time,” the source said of the conversations that were ongoing between Tillis and the president up until the moment Trump ripped Tillis publicly.

Tillis said he had talked to Trump on the phone for a “couple of days” before he decided to vote against Trump’s megabill.

A Senate Republican strategist said that GOP senators are unnerved by Trump blowing up a vulnerable GOP incumbent over a policy dispute when Tillis has otherwise been a loyal teammate — helping to confirm key members of Trump’s Cabinet, such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and taking tough votes to pass Trump’s agenda in the president’s first term.

“He is a great fit for his state and was looking out for the best interests of North Carolina, so to see him pushed aside like that is unfortunate, and frankly he deserves better than that,” the strategist said of Tillis.

“If you’re a Republican senator in a vulnerable position or with a potential primary challenge — or even if you don’t have a primary challenge — that’s your worst nightmare politically, to have President Trump come after you,” the strategist said.

“It’s another reminder of the consequences that come to bear if you cross the president,” the source added.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) was spotted having a long conversation with Tillis on the Senate floor shortly after he announced his surprise retirement.

Murkowski herself was threatened by Trump with a primary challenge after voting to convict him on an impeachment charge in early 2021. She later described the process of negotiating her way to supporting the "big, beautiful bill" as “agonizing.”

Trump torched Tillis in a lengthy Truth Social post published at 9:48 p.m. on Saturday, June 28, shortly after Tillis voted against the motion to proceed to the bill and after he made it clear he would also vote “no” on final passage.

The president accused Tillis of wanting to increase taxes on the nation by 68 percent and wrote that he was “unable to understand the importance of a debt extension,” even though Tillis made it clear that he supported the tax cuts in the bill but had a major problem with the deep Medicaid cuts drafted by the Senate Finance Committee.

Trump accused Tillis, who was considered one of the Senate GOP’s two most vulnerable incumbents, of “being willing to throw the very important Tobacco Industry in North Carolina ‘out the window.’”

And he claimed the senator “loves China made windmills that will cost a fortune, ruin the landscape, and produce the most expensive Energy on Earth.”

Six minutes after Trump’s comments were posted, Tillis sent him a terse message.

“Ack Mr. President,” Tillis wrote in a text to Trump at 9:54 p.m. “Start thinking about my replacement.”

The text exchange between Tillis and Trump was later shared with The Hill.

Tillis told reporters on Sunday that he thought he and Trump had engaged in a “meeting of the minds” when they talked in the hours before Trump posted his scathing takedown.

“President Trump and I talked last night. I left assuming that we had a meeting of the minds and then that didn’t turn out,” he said, referring to what he thought was an amiable conversation with the president before Trump posted his bombshell critique on Truth Social.

Tillis said he was wavering about running for reelection anyway and then decided at that moment it would be a good time to announce his retirement to the commander in chief.

“It was something I was contemplating, so it just seemed like the right time to let him know that I wouldn’t be running again,” he said.

Tillis said he’s not on Truth Social and didn’t read the posts himself, but it appears he was well aware of their content when he texted Trump.  

The senator had previously stressed to reporters for months that he had a good relationship with Trump.

He took a difficult vote to confirm Hegseth earlier this year, despite privately voicing serious misgivings about the nominee.  

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) and other senators expressed dismay over the nasty spat and Tillis’s sudden decision to retire after he had previously shown strong commitment to the 2026 race — at least publicly.

“It’s just unfortunate because he was a real asset here in the Senate,” Rounds said of Tillis.

Rounds said North Carolina is a “purple state” and “you’re going to have a knock-down, drag-out” fight in trying to keep it in the Republican column. “There’s going to be a heck of a lot money spent in that state.”

“It is what it is and now we got to deal with it,” Rounds said stoically. “Tom’s a solid guy and I’m very sorry to hear he decided to retire.”

“He’s a very capable campaigner,” he added.  

Rounds said Tillis brought valuable perspective to Senate negotiations because he had a background of working on a bipartisan, pragmatic basis to get things done when he served as Speaker of the North Carolina state House.

“He and I go back because I was majority leader in the [South Dakota] state Senate and he was a speaker of the [state] House. We would commiserate on a regular basis about how things work up here [in Washington] versus how it worked back in our home states,” he said.

National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Tim Scott (S.C.) told GOP donors at a retreat in Palm Beach, Fla., in February that the North Carolina Senate race would be the most expensive in the country, potentially costing $700 million.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report shifted the North Carolina race from “Lean Republican” to “toss up” after Tillis announced he would not run for a third term.

Former Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) called Tillis’s sudden retirement after the blowup with Trump “a setback” for his party.

“Sen. Thom Tillis is one of the most effective and collegial members that I have ever served with in the United States Senate. His announcement is a big setback for the Senate and the Republican Conference,” he posted on the social platform X.