Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) had a pointed warning for President Donald Trump after the president publicly shared another Republican senator’s phone number during a weekend policy feud.
“With all due respect, I got his number too,” Tillis said Monday during an appearance on ABC’s “The View.”
The remark came after co-host Ana Navarro suggested Trump could retaliate against Tillis by publishing his phone number, particularly as the retiring North Carolina senator promotes a new book detailing his increasingly contentious relationship with the president.
Trump had done exactly that to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) just days earlier.
The president posted what appeared to be Cotton’s personal cellphone number on Truth Social on Saturday while pressuring the Arkansas Republican to support the Sunshine Protection Act, legislation aimed at ending the twice-yearly clock change and allowing permanent daylight saving time.
“Almost everybody wants ‘The Sunshine Protection Act’ to pass, except for Tom Cotton,” Trump wrote, before encouraging Arkansas voters to contact the senator.
Trump included Cotton’s number in another post and urged supporters to tell him to “GET IT DONE!”
Fox News Digital reported that it called the number Trump posted, which carried an Arkansas area code, but did not reach Cotton. The Washington Post similarly reported that a call to the number went directly to a full voicemail inbox.
Cotton refused to budge.
“No one likes changing the clock, me included, but Congress has enacted permanent Daylight Saving Time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” Cotton wrote on X.
“Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.”
The dispute has put two normally aligned Republicans on opposite sides of an unusual policy fight.
The House passed its version of the Sunshine Protection Act in July by a bipartisan 308-117 vote, but the measure has stalled in the Senate, where Cotton is among several Republicans opposed to the change. The Senate is currently out of session until Nov. 3, meaning lawmakers cannot act on the measure before the midterm elections.
Tillis, meanwhile, appeared amused by the possibility that he could become Trump’s next target.
The North Carolina Republican was appearing on “The View” to promote his new book, “How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents,” which recounts his clashes with Trump and members of the president’s administration.
After Tillis discussed private exchanges with Trump included in the book, Navarro quipped that the president might “give your phone away after this.”
Tillis immediately fired back.
“With all due respect, I got his number too.”
When asked whether he feared retaliation from Trump over the book, Tillis said, “Not at all.”
The senator, who is not seeking reelection, has become increasingly willing to criticize the administration as his time in Washington winds down.
His book describes his vote to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as the “biggest regret” of his congressional career. During Monday’s interview, Tillis went even further when asked about an effort to impeach Hegseth.
“I hope he gets fired,” Tillis said.
Still, Tillis offered Trump some praise, calling him a “great political force” who demonstrated an ability to assemble an unusual coalition of voters.
But he warned Republicans that some of those gains may be slipping away heading into the midterms.
“The support among Hispanics has almost evaporated,” Tillis said. “So the very coalitions that the president … was able to pull together are falling apart.”
Tillis’s warning over the phone-number episode also carries a bit of history.
Trump has used the tactic before. During his first presidential campaign in 2015, he publicly read out then-Sen. Lindsey Graham’s cellphone number at a South Carolina rally after Graham criticized him.
