By The American Tribune | Created at 2026-10-09 10:26:22 | Updated at 2026-10-09 14:46:19
4 hours ago
Outgoing Senator Thom Tillis used another CNN appearance to attack President Donald Trump’s direction for the Republican Party, pointing to an election loss as a possible catalyst for reversing it. The North Carolina Republican took aim at the party’s approach to tariffs, government involvement in corporations and Russia. He argued that Republicans had drifted away from the principles he wants them to follow.
Tillis made the remarks Wednesday, October 7th, on CNN’s “The Arena with Kasie Hunt” while discussing his book, “How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents”. The interview followed an appearance with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins the previous evening. Tillis, who announced in June 2025 that he would not seek reelection, has been using those appearances to criticize Trump and members of his administration.
Hunt began the discussion of the party’s future by asking about Vice President JD Vance and the 2028 presidential nomination. Tillis called Vance “politically or ideologically inconsistent,” saying the senator he previously served alongside differed from the vice president implementing Trump’s priorities. He declined to call that disqualifying, but argued that Vance needed to establish his own political identity.
As Breitbart reported, Tillis ridiculed Republicans who attempt to reproduce Trump’s personality. He compared them to someone putting on a Spider-Man costume without being bitten by a radioactive spider. The senator dismissed that imitation as a bad look and argued that another Republican would be unable to duplicate Trump’s personal appeal.
Tillis said he had been a Republican while Trump was hosting fundraisers for Democrats. After briefly acknowledging that he approved of some things Trump had done for the party, he challenged its current policies. His objections included government equity stakes in corporations, tariffs regardless of trade balances, and favorable views of Russia or Vladimir Putin. “That’s not a conservative Republican Party,” he said.
The exchange turned to whether Trump had permanently changed the GOP. Hunt asked what evidence supported Tillis’s contention that Republicans could return to the direction he preferred. Tillis acknowledged the difficulty of changing course during a populist period, then identified electoral defeat as a potential incentive: “there’s nothing like a loss in the elections for people to go back.”
Tillis predicted a poor Republican outcome in the House and called for the party to “get back to core principles.” His list included limited government, lower taxes, opposition to abortion, gun rights, families and support for NATO. Elsewhere in the interview, he urged Republicans to continue making campaign calls and knocking on doors.
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The previous evening, Tillis’s criticism extended to his own vote to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. During his interview with Collins, the senator discussed his book’s description of that decision as the “biggest regret of my career.” Collins also confronted him with the practical limitation of his promises to help redirect Republicans: he is leaving the Senate. Tillis responded that others would follow him.
Watch Tillis discuss his regret for confirming Hegseth here:
That interview also featured a private text Tillis said he had sent Trump, saying the president had never directly threatened him with a primary challenge. In the message, Tillis said he would have responded to a direct threat by announcing his departure immediately and telling the president off. He closed the text by telling Trump: “Save those threats and head games for cowards and fools.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.
