Appearing on CNN to speak with Jake Tapper about the state of the primary elections in America and to trash President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement generally, longtime RINO (Republican in Name Only) Senator Thom Tillis (NC) went on the attack and vowed to stonewall President Trump because he no longer has to worry about re-election.
As background, MAGA celebrated quite a great deal back in June of 2025 when Sen. Tillis announced that he would not be running for a third term, and would instead be retiring, with MAGA excited about the opportunity to replace the notorious RINO with someone a good bit better who would stick more closely to the president’s agenda.
The disdain and dislike appear to be quite mutual, as Tillis and Tapper joked about how excited they are that Tillis and other RINOs like him will be stonewalling the Trump Administration and blocking the MAGA agenda as much as possible. Tillis, in fact, said that he now considers himself part of a “YOLO Caucus,” consisting of “Republicans on their way out the door that President Trump has helped pressure and instigate.”
Continuing, he said that while he used to be worried about re-election and about how his words might be used against him in such campaigns, now he is not, and he’s happy to pander to the left. “I try to tell everybody, folks, if you’re not running for reelection, then that one filter that you need to make sure your words are measured,” he said.
That is when Tillis went absolutely ballistic about Trump endorsing Ken Paxton instead of John Cornyn in the Texas Senate race. Attacking both Trump and Paxton, the angry RINO senator said, “And I’m being unambiguous on Paxton. He is a failure. He doesn’t deserve to be in the US Senate.”
Ignoring that Cornyn is looking like he will lose massively as he is hugely unpopular with the people of Texas, Paxton then went on to praise him, saying that Cornyn “is one of the most powerful, one of the most influential, one of those patriotic members I’ve had the privilege to serve with over the last 11 years.”
Jake Tapper then gleefully exclaimed, “Senator Tom Tillis, YOLO a bolo!” in reference to both Tillis’s absurdly oversized bolo tie and what Tapper had said earlier in the interview, when he said, “Is there going to be something of a You Only Live Once, YOLO Caucus, of Republicans on their way out the door that President Trump has helped pressure and instigate?”
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Commenters on X sounded off on Tillis, snapping, “Never been more solidified in my support of Paxton than right now”, “This plays well to about .0001 of the population and is repulsive and embarrassing to the rest of us”, “Unfiltered Tillis is exactly why he and those of his ilk need to be removed…..”, and “Tillis says he’s happy he no longer has to lie to the rubes in his state to get re-elected, is that about right?”