Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said President Donald Trump committed a “colossal mistake” by declining to support Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) in his primary race, arguing the decision turned a safe Republican seat into an expensive battleground. Tillis made the remarks Sunday during an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union,” according to Breitbart News.
During the interview, Tillis pointed to Texas as one of several states where Republicans are suddenly facing competitive fights. He described the situation as an “unforced error created by the president” and said the White House now needs to invest in the state to ensure Attorney General Ken Paxton wins.
“We’ve got to focus on Ohio,” Tillis said. “But we’ve also got to focus on some of these states that are popping up as competitive. Texas, for example. That to me is an unforced error created by the president. Now the president needs to invest in there to make sure Paxton wins.”
‘Tens, if not hundreds of millions’
Anchor Jake Tapper pressed Tillis on the broader implications of the Texas race, noting that Cornyn lost his primary β a result Tapper suggested few would have predicted, given Cornyn’s incumbency and the expectation he would have cruised to reelection. Tapper said Republicans now face the prospect of spending heavily in both Texas and North Carolina, two states where Trump antagonized sitting GOP senators who likely would have won without a serious challenge.
Tapper asked Tillis what it says about the president that he appeared more focused on attacking Tillis and Cornyn over perceived disloyalty than on protecting the party’s Senate majority.
Tillis drew a distinction between his own situation and Cornyn’s. He said he was already leaning toward retirement before Trump weighed in, and that the president simply gave him “a good opportunity to announce” it. But he was far more pointed about Texas.
“In the case of Cornyn, he made a colossal mistake,” Tillis said. “John Cornyn is a great member of the U.S. Senate. Paxton has his challenges. We would not be spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in Texas if Cornyn had won.”
Paxton’s general election prospects, Tillis argued, are complicated by the attorney general’s own political baggage β an apparent reference to the controversies that have trailed Paxton throughout his career, including a long-running securities fraud case and an impeachment trial in the Texas legislature.
A party that demands loyalty
Tillis tied the Texas result to a broader shift inside the Republican Party, where he said a single disagreement with the president can now be treated as disqualifying. He pointed to Cornyn’s voting record as evidence that the loyalty litmus test has become detached from how senators actually govern.
“This party has evolved to a point to where one or two disagreements with the president, Cornyn’s a classic example, voting with the president over 98, 99% of the time,” Tillis said. “Folks, now is not the time for these loyalty oaths. Now is the time for Republicans to get elected.”
The North Carolina senator’s argument amounts to a public rebuke of the president’s approach to midterm recruitment and party discipline at a moment when Senate Republicans are defending a narrow majority. His warning about spending suggests the party’s campaign arm and outside groups may be forced to divert resources from other battlegrounds to shore up a state that has not elected a Democrat to the Senate in decades.
Both Texas and North Carolina now sit on the front line of that fight. In Texas, Republicans are left to consolidate behind Paxton, whose general election vulnerabilities Tillis did not downplay. In North Carolina, Tillis’s retirement has opened up a seat that Democrats are expected to target aggressively, adding to the party’s financial burden.
Tillis’s remarks also underscore the tension between Trump’s preference for candidates he views as personally loyal and the electoral math facing Republicans in competitive states. By framing Cornyn’s loss as a preventable setback, Tillis put the blame squarely on the White House rather than on the senator who lost the primary.
Whether that criticism moves the president or the party’s donors remains to be seen. But Tillis made clear he sees the cost as both financial and strategic β a price he suggested Republicans would not have had to pay had the president stayed out of the race.
Source: www.breitbart.com β https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2026/09/27/tillis-trump-made-a-colossal-mistake-not-supporting-sen-cornyn/