Sen. Thom Tillis Says One Trump Move Made Him ‘Done With This Bulls**t’

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) doesn’t want to be the next Mitt Romney. Not because he’s afraid to oppose the people he believes are giving the president bad advice, but because he can’t promise he’ll do so as politely as his former colleague from Utah.

In a handful of interviews since he announced he won’t seek reelection in 2026, the North Carolina senator has repeatedly said he doesn’t intend to necessarily oppose the president ― though he’s eager to call out the “amateurs” who have his ear.

“Frankly, on the current path, with some of the advice he’s getting from unelecteds in the White House, I’m concerned that he’s not going to have much of a legacy if we don’t start standing up to them, and standing up to what I consider to be bad advice,” Tillis told Charlotte’s WBT News Talk on Wednesday.

The hand-wringing came as he reflected on the damage Trump’s so-called Big, Beautiful Bill will do to people who depend on Medicaid in North Carolina and across the country.

North Carolina will have to kick 663,000 people off Medicaid because of the bill, Tillis told the station. He’s worried that, once people across the country start to feel the effects, it won’t hurt just Trump, it’ll kneecap the entire Republican Party.

Tillis told WBT he decided it was time to retire from Congress after it became clear Trump would continue listening to “amateurish” advisers, when what Republicans really need to do is “to show that we’re adults and that we’re governing and that we’re making tough decisions and not always taking the bait to go to the extremes.”

That became clear when Trump criticized Tillis on social media after he privately shared his misgivings with Trump about the signature bill.

“If somebody wants to know why I’m not running, it’s because some bonehead told him to post something and pretend like that was going to affect me,” Tillis told Semafor on Tuesday. “It affected me in a way that said: ‘I’m done with this bullshit.’”

Tillis told Semafor Trump’s tariffs are yet another example of the president folding to bad advice, calling them a “dud” and “objectively a failure.”

He also repeatedly told the outlet he’s prone to mirroring the behaviors of others. So if Trump wants to antagonize him, he’s more than happy to return the favor.

“If the president were to say something about me the way he did about Mitt Romney, people could only hope that I would behave like Mitt Romney,” he said. “Let’s just put it that way. I don’t take a pass on anybody flexing with me.”