During a Monday night appearance on CNN’s The Source, host Kaitlan Collins confronted the North Carolina Republican with one of the most striking passages from his new book, How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents.
The passage was about Trump.
“I’ve also found that the President of the United States… has even thinner skin than I once thought he did,” Tillis wrote.
Then came the punchline:
“Seriously, what a snowflake.”
Collins put the quote on screen and asked Tillis about calling the Republican president a snowflake.
Tillis didn’t retreat.
“He does have thin skin,” Tillis responded.
The senator argued that he was simply acknowledging something that people around Trump already understand.
“And I think everybody knows it,” Tillis said.
Then he delivered another message:
“Get over it, folks.”
It was an unusually direct assessment of Trump from a sitting Republican senator — particularly after years in which public criticism of the president has often carried political consequences inside the GOP.
But Tillis, who is retiring rather than seeking another term, has increasingly shown a willingness to publicly disagree with Trump.
And the “snowflake” exchange wasn’t the only time that happened during his CNN appearance.
Collins also asked Tillis about Trump’s controversial comments involving Los Angeles and San Diego.
Tillis said the president needed to explain what he meant.
“If I were the president, I would clarify the comments,” he said.
The senator also offered a blunt assessment of one of the biggest problems facing Republicans as the midterm elections approach: the economy.
Republicans campaigned on fixing it, Tillis acknowledged.
But he conceded that they haven’t delivered the kind of improvement voters were promised.
“We said we were going to fix the economy,” Tillis said. “And we haven’t fixed it substantially.”
That admission comes at an uncomfortable moment for Republicans, with control of Congress at stake and candidates in competitive races increasingly facing questions about how closely they want to align themselves with Trump.
Tillis is in a different position.
He isn’t fighting for another term.
That gives him considerably more freedom to say publicly what many elected Republicans might prefer to keep private.
And his forthcoming book makes clear that he intends to use it.
The title alone — How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents — leaves little doubt that Tillis plans to revisit his clashes with some of the most powerful people in Washington.
But Collins gave viewers a preview Monday night.
She put Tillis’ own words about Trump directly in front of him and gave him every opportunity to soften them.
He didn’t.
Trump has “thin skin,” Tillis said.
And as for anyone bothered by him saying it?
“Get over it, folks.”
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