Senator Thom Tillis returned to CNN on Sunday to accuse President Donald Trump of making a “colossal mistake” in Texas’s Republican Senate primary. The outgoing North Carolina Republican argued that Trump’s decision to back Attorney General Ken Paxton over Senator John Cornyn had turned the race into an expensive fight. Tillis also complained that Republicans who agree with the president on nearly everything can still run afoul of demands for loyalty. Even as he blamed Trump for the primary result, he said the president now needs to help Paxton win in November.
Tillis made the remarks during a September 27th appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union” with Jake Tapper. The conversation began with North Carolina, where Tillis is retiring and former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley is seeking his seat. Tapper pressed him on whether Republicans should keep spending heavily on that race as they try to preserve their Senate majority. Their discussion then turned to Texas, where Paxton defeated Cornyn in the May Republican runoff and now faces Democratic state Rep. James Talarico.
Asked whether North Carolina should remain a top priority, Tillis said party spending should follow the polling and each candidate’s path to victory. He recalled a difficult stretch during his own 2014 campaign, when he told Senate Republicans to put their money elsewhere if they thought he couldn’t win. They invested in his race, and he won. Tillis said the same calculation should guide Republicans now, while allowing that a late change in a race could alter the picture.
That led Tillis to name other states where he said Republicans needed to concentrate, including Maine, Alaska and Ohio. Then he brought up Texas, calling the contest an “unforced error created by the president.” As Breitbart reported, Tillis said Trump now had to invest in the state to “make sure Paxton wins.” Trump endorsed Paxton one week before the runoff, which Paxton went on to win.
Tapper argued that Trump had antagonized both Tillis and Cornyn when the two incumbents otherwise might have had easier paths to reelection. Tillis pushed back on the part concerning his own departure, saying, “To be fair to the president, he didn’t force me out.” He said he’d already been moving toward retirement and that the confrontation gave him an opening to announce it. Tillis had publicly declared in June 2025 that he wouldn’t seek another term.
He didn’t extend that grace to the Texas race, however. Tillis praised Cornyn’s Senate service, said Paxton faced challenges, and argued that a Cornyn nomination would have spared Republicans the need to spend tens or hundreds of millions of dollars defending Texas. He urged Republicans to devote resources to electing Paxton in the general election after criticizing Trump’s choice in the primary.
Watch Tillis discuss the Texas race here:
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Tillis turned from the candidates to the party’s treatment of Republicans who disagree with Trump on individual issues. He claimed Cornyn had voted with the president 98-99% of the time, using that estimate to argue against what he called “loyalty oaths.” Trump had given a different reason for his endorsement: he said Cornyn had failed to support him when his political fortunes were under pressure and had been late to back his 2024 campaign. The president’s explanation appeared in his endorsement of Paxton, as the Texas Tribune reported.
Tillis said that if Republicans reject colleagues who support the president almost all the time, “I’d like for them to go find another party.” Tillis described himself as a lifelong Republican and said he couldn’t meet that standard of agreement. He finished his point about those expectations bluntly: “They’re unrealistic, they’re unsustainable, and they also cause us to lose elections.”
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video.