Outgoing North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis (R) went all-in on his criticism of President Donald Trump and his administration during a scorched-earth appearance on this weekend’s “State of the Union.”
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Seeming to embrace a “nothing to lose” strategy while talking to CNN’s Jake Tapper, he railed against a potential peace deal with Iran, the president’s freshly allocated “Anti-Weaponization Fund” and Trump’s candidate of choice in a hotly contested GOP runoff for a U.S. Senate seat in Texas.
Tillis, who last year announced he would retire when his term wraps at the start of 2027, called the Department of Justice’s $1.776 billion settlement pool for what it described as “victims of lawfare” a “bogus … payout pot” that he found “stupid on stilts.”
“You’re talking about people who assaulted Capitol police officers on January the 6th, were then convicted,” he said. “Many of them pled guilty, or they were convicted by a jury of their peers. They could be eligible for this.”
Prior to the administration saying it had agreed in principle to a deal to deescalate in Iran late Sunday morning, Tillis said what he knew of the tentative terms “doesn’t make sense.”
He also pilloried Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, saying his missteps in Iran and the war between Ukraine and Russia made scandal-plagued former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem “look like a five-star recruit” by comparison.
But Tillis reserved his most scathing rebuke for Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, who secured Trump’s endorsement last week, invoking infamous serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer in his denouncement.
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“To call Paxton ‘ethically challenged’ is to call Jeffrey Dahmer ‘suffering from an eating disorder,’” Tillis sliced.
“This guy is an empty suit and will do us no service by being in the U.S. Congress,” he went on, putting his full weight behind incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
The president already broadcast his displeasure with Tillis following the senator’s unsparing interview with Politico published Friday.
On Truth Social, Trump wrote, “The media said how brave he was to take me on, but he wasn’t brave, he was just the opposite — HE WAS A QUITTER!”
“Now he can have all the fun he wants for a few months, with some of his RINO friends, screwing the Republican Party. In the end it will only get bigger, and better, and stronger, than ever before!!!”
In response, Tillis told Tapper, “If the Republican Party stands for standing with insurrectionists who assaulted police officers, turning a blind eye towards” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s actions, and negotiating an Iran deal that may be “subpar” to the Obama-era agreement Trump scrapped in 2018, “then don’t call me a Republican. Just call me a conservative.”
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Watch Tillis’ full takedown of Trump and company on CNN’s YouTube account.
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