Republican senators aren't happy about how President Trump treated Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), whom the president blasted last week on social media after Tillis said he wouldn’t vote for Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.”

Tillis is highly regarded among colleagues as a team player focused on getting results, and many Republicans thought he would have had the best chance of keeping the North Carolina Senate seat in GOP hands.

Senate Republicans are expressing disappointment over Tillis’s sudden retirement announcement, which came after Trump tore into him on social media and publicly solicited other Republicans to run for North Carolina’s Senate seat in 2026.

“I do think it was totally unnecessary,” one Republican senator who requested anonymity said of Trump’s rough treatment of Tillis on social media.

“I just don’t think it really achieves anything good to come after somebody just because they disagree with you,” the senator added.

The lawmaker said that Tillis was in regular touch with Trump and Senate GOP leadership to express his concerns about the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law on July 4.

“He was talking to him the whole time,” the source said of the conversations that were ongoing between Tillis and the president up until the moment Trump ripped Tillis publicly.

Tillis said he had talked to Trump on the phone for a “couple of days” before he decided to vote against Trump’s megabill.

A Senate Republican strategist said that GOP senators are unnerved by Trump blowing up a vulnerable GOP incumbent over a policy dispute when Tillis has otherwise been a loyal teammate — helping to confirm key members of Trump’s Cabinet, such as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and taking tough votes to pass Trump’s agenda in the president’s first term.

“He is a great fit for his state and was........

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