One member of the Senate Republican Conference who has officially ruled out another term said that while he doesn't plan on sabotaging President Donald Trump's agenda, he also won't put up with "disrespectful" behavior during his last 18 months in Washington.
On Tuesday, Semafor published an interview with outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who announced that he was not seeking a third term in the U.S. Senate after officially coming out against the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act." The North Carolina Republican attributed his decision to leave the Senate to a post from Trump on his Truth Social platform attacking him. One Senate Republican anonymously told The Hill that they viewed Trump's post as "totally unnecessary."
"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. “It affected me in a way that said: ‘I’m done with this bulls---.’"
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Several times during the interview, Tillis warned that he returned behavior he was presented with, and cited one example of a Trump supporter who confronted him at the Washington D.C. airport over his opposition to confirming former interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin. The two-term Senate Republican told Semafor's Burgess Everett that he was a "former trailer park resident."
"There’s no human being on the face of the planet whose behavior I wouldn’t mirror if it’s disrespectful," he said.
Tillis also bristled at the comparisons to former Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who became a thorn in the side of Trump's first administration by often voting against his legislative agenda. He cautioned Trump against comparing him to the one-time Republican presidential nominee, and implied that there would be consequences if the president attacked him in a similar fashion as he did Romney.
“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," Tillis said. "Let’s just put it that way. I don’t take a pass on anybody flexing with me.”
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Click here to read Semafor's interview with Tillis in full.