Tillis Runs to The View to Slam Trump: "I Have His Number, Too"

Sen. Thom Tillis went on ABC's The View on October 6 to sell a book, and he picked a friendly room to do it.

What Happened

Tillis was promoting his memoir, How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents, which contains profanity-laced text exchanges with Trump. According to Gateway Pundit's account, which credits Breitbart, the hosts brought up Trump publicly posting Sen. Tom Cotton's phone number. Co-host Ana Navarro joked that Trump would give Tillis's number away after the appearance. Tillis answered: "With all due respect, I have his number, too."

Gateway Pundit calls that a threat to dox the president. That is the outlet's reading, not something Tillis said. As quoted, the line is ambiguous. It could be a literal point that he has Trump's contact information, or just a comeback. We will not claim more than the words support.

How We Got Here

Tillis is not on the ballot. He announced last June that he would not seek another term, after he voted against advancing Trump's reconciliation bill over its Medicaid changes and Trump threatened to meet with primary challengers, as Axios reported. Roll Call quoted him in January saying his retirement removed "boundaries I should have in expressing my concern" about White House policies.

Since then he has been a steady critic. Trump called him a "loser" in an ABC News interview. Tillis joked back: "Apparently that qualifies me for DHS secretary and senior adviser to the president!" He called for then-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to resign, saying she "needs to get out of the C-suite," and he has blamed "bad advice" from Trump's advisers on decisions involving Greenland, the Federal Reserve and Minnesota immigration incidents.

What He Says About Himself

Tillis insists he will "support the vast majority of what the president wants" for the rest of his term and calls the relationship "transactional." He also holds a swing vote on the Senate Banking Committee, which splits 13 to 11, and Roll Call reported he was conditioning a Federal Reserve chair confirmation on resolving the Justice Department's investigation of Jerome Powell. More recently, OPB reported, he compared the administration's DHS ads to those used by Hungary's Viktor Orban.

The Other Side

Tillis's defenders will say a senator who is leaving is free to say what his colleagues will not, and that a book tour is where retiring politicians tell their stories. That is fair, and it is his right.

Our Take

But the choice of venue tells you something. Tillis could have raised these complaints with the president, with his own conference or with the voters he represented. He took them to a daytime panel that has spent years hostile to Trump, while selling copies of a book about his fights with him. He says he backs most of the president's agenda. Roll Call reported that he sees disagreement with the president on only a couple of issues, which makes the national stage he chose for these complaints more notable, not less. A reader can decide whether a sympathetic audience and a book tour make a serious critique, or a good sales pitch.