Tillis defends insulting Trump officials: ‘I stand by all that’

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Tuesday defended insults from his new political memoir thrown at Trump administration officials, saying he stands “by all that.”

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins read off Tillis’s “unsparing” remarks from “How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents,” starting with the North Carolina Republican saying his vote to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was “the biggest regret” of his career.

“You admit that you should have stopped [Robert F. Kennedy Jr.] from becoming health secretary,” Collins continued. “You say [former Director of National Intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard won’t be challenging anyone for president of her local Mensa chapter. You say [ex-Homeland Security Secretary] Kristi Noem’s a dog murderer and that [Commerce Secretary] Howard Lutnick ‘is nuttier than squirrel s‑‑‑.'”

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“I stand by all that,” Tillis responded. “What else you got?”

The senator, who is retiring at the end of the term, said he supports “the majority of people” in the president’s Cabinet. Collins pushed back, saying his comments hit the majority of top Trump administration officials.

“The point is we hired them, we made a decision to put them in there,” he replied. “I’m giving them their annual review. They didn’t pass, you cycle them out.”

Tillis added, “Get somebody else, get somebody that can tell the president the truth, set the priorities right and get us reelected. That’s all this is about.”

Criticisms aside, he argued Trump is a populist who will do “a good job of bringing out that base that’s uniquely motivated by him” to vote in the upcoming November midterm elections.

“Traditional conservatives, traditional Republicans have to do their part to get the other folks out and say, ‘Guys, we’re dealing with populism just like the Democrats did with Biden and with Obama. And we’ve got to get through it. But you don’t abandon your party,'” the Republican added.

Tillis wrote in his book that he does not have “beef” with the president, only with “the idiots he’s got working for him,” The Associated Press reported before the book’s release on Tuesday.

The GOP lawmaker has stood apart from some of the White House’s positions and proposals in the past, including Trump’s immigration agenda. He recently said he agreed with his Senate Republican colleagues that mass deportations have gone too far , noting that the president’s support among Hispanic voters has dropped since 2024.

“I would rather have 100 illegally present people go free than have that innocent person caught,” he previously told The Hill.

Tillis said Monday that, with the book’s release, he was “not at all” concerned about possible retaliation from the White House, particularly after Trump posted Sen. Tom Cotton’s (R-Ark.) phone number to Truth Social after he opposed a bill to make daylight saving time permanent.

The senator told ABC’s “The View” that the book includes private text exchanges between him and the president, noting that with “all due respect, I got his number too.”