A furious GOP senator’s foul-mouthed text messages to President Trump have been revealed.
The retiring North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis is no stranger to a bust-up with the president and is once again taking their scrap public in his forthcoming memoir, How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents.
Politico’s Playbook has shared some details that will appear in the book, which will be released next week.
In one jaw-dropping text message to the president in late May, Tillis rages about “bulls--t” that apparently came from Trump.
“I still want to help but I don’t take this bulls--t from anyone, including you Mr. President. Save that s--t for the cowards who don’t care if you fail. I care if you fail and right now we are failing,” the 66-year-old said.
On June 6, he was even angrier. “As I have said before, you NEVER threatened me with a primary challenge. I get that you may have me confused with so many Republicans that you have threatened in the past, but NEVER me. If you had ever threatened me directly with a primary, I would have immediately told you to f--k yourself, and I would have announced my retirement immediately. Save those threats and head games for cowards and fools,” he said.
Playbook did not publish the replies or the messages that spurned the senator’s explosive responses.
The senator, one of the most high-profile Republicans to say he could not support Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” announced in June 2025 that he would not seek re-election in this year’s midterm elections.
After that, Trump used Truth Social to label him “a talker and complainer, NOT A DOER!” and threatened to support primary challengers to him during the midterms.
From that point on, he became more publicly critical of the president.
Announcing his decision, he lamented the lack of bipartisanship in U.S. politics and criticized leaders who, in his view, did not consider how the bill would affect regular Americans.
“In Washington over the last few years, it’s become increasingly evident that leaders who are willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species,” he wrote in a statement.
He also suggested that Republicans care more about political points than the impact of the policies they vote on, saying, “Too many elected officials are motivated by pure raw politics who really don’t give a damn about the people they promised to represent on the campaign trail.”
Tillis is not afraid to fight Trump. He, along with jilted Texas Senator John Cornyn, refused to back acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s nomination to get the role full-time.
Tillis urged Blanche to meet with victims of Jeffrey Epstein and urged the government to scrap the controversial “anti-weaponization” fund designed to compensate people who feel they’ve been unfairly targeted by the government.
In a freewheeling reaction to their pushback, Trump posted on August 1, “If Senators Cornyn and Tillis, both upset because I wouldn’t Endorse them (they lost, and quit, respectively!), aren’t going to approve Todd Blanche, one of the most respected professionals, according to everybody, in the Country, to be the United States Attorney General, then I will keep Todd as Acting A.G., and push hard to get the Anti-Weaponization Bill, which takes care of those who have been so badly treated by the Crooked Joe Biden (and Obuma!) Administration (I get nothing, although I was treated horribly!), PASSED.”
The next day, an order rescinded the fund, and the senators backed Blanche.
Tillis’ book is set to pack a punch, and he has made it clear who he will target with a telling cover. It prominently features White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and former DHS Secretary Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem.
It promises to unload on“how the sycophants surrounding President Trump, spineless Republican yes-men (and -women), and the weirdos of the MAGA world can’t get out of their own way,” according to a summary from HarperCollins.
The Daily Beast has asked the White House to respond to Tillis’ text messages. Tillis’ representatives have also been asked for comment.
