Retiring North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis has accused President Donald Trump of having surprisingly “thin skin” for a public figure who’s always picking fights.
Tillis, 66, has a long history with Trump, 80, and has documented their explosive relationship in a new memoir, How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents. The tome also reveals NSFW texts between the pair, one saying he was ready to tell Trump, “F--k yourself.”
The president spent years slamming Tillis for being insufficiently loyal before effectively forcing him into retirement, blasting the two-term senator as a “loser” and a “quitter.”
The senator’s promotional tour for his book saw him appear on The Source with Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday, where the host was shocked by how quickly Tillis attacks Trump in his memoir.
Calling his book “pretty blunt,” Collins pointed out that Tillis even writes in the prologue, “I’ve also found that President of the United States... has even thinner skin than I once thought he did. Seriously, what a snowflake.”
Tillis laughed when the CNN host read out his spicy prologue, then clarified, “He does have thin skin. It’s like, get over it, folks. I mean, we’re public figures. We get criticized every single day. Welcome to the club. Get past it. Don’t be distracted by it. That’s exactly what people want. They want you to flake out over a comment. Get past it. Move on. Lead.”
The Republican also claimed that Trump’s relatively small amount of time as an elected politician leads to incidents such as his comment about Los Angeles and San Diego, where he spoke about his war on Iran and said, “They can take out a city—let ’em take, let ’em take out Los Angeles, let ’em take out San Diego. That’s—this is a very small price to pay.”
Tillis said Trump “doesn’t realize that every word that he mentions...has weight. It has more weight than any other person in the United States.”
He added, “You’ve got to be really careful, because sometimes he says things in jest that are treated seriously. I think that was taken out of context. I hope he’ll clean that up.”
Collins pointed out on Tuesday that Trump had repeatedly refused to answer questions from reporters to clarify exactly what he meant by his comment.
“Look, you know, the one thing about the American people, they’re a forgiving people,” Tillis said of Trump’s muted response. “And if you go to them and you tell them, ‘Yeah, I made a mistake, I learned from it, this is what I’m going to do differently’, they give you another chance. But if you double down on bad ideas, then they don’t give you a third chance.”
Tillis’ book features photos of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and former DHS Secretary Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem on the cover.
Collins listed insults by Tillis to Republicans taken directly from the book, stating, “You say Pete Hegseth is the biggest regret of your career... You admit that you should have stopped RFK Jr. from becoming health secretary. You say [Director of National Intelligence] Tulsi Gabbard won’t be challenging anyone for president of her local Mensa chapter. You say Kristi Noem’s a dog murderer, and that [Commerce Secretary] Howard Lutnick, quote, `Is nuttier than squirrel s---’”.
Tillis said, “Mm-hmm. Now, I stand by all that. What else you got?”
The Republican also cleared up what he calls “MAGATS,” members of the Make America Great Movement who are also Trump Sycophants.
Tillis said Hegseth is “100 percent” a MAGAT.
“When you tell the president he’s got a great idea, when in your heart of hearts you know it’s not, then you’re lying to the president. You’re misleading him,” Tillis said.
“We owe it to the president to give him the upward feedback as members of the U.S. Senate and as members of his Cabinet to make his legacy better,” he said. “And if they have a tough discussion, if he doesn’t like it, then you ought to be able to go find a job somewhere else, but at least you can look in the mirror and be proud of how you served.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment.
