It didn’t take long after Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) announced his retirement for the mask to come off.
Just hours after revealing he won’t seek re-election, the North Carolina senator took to the Senate floor and unleashed a scathing tirade against President Trump’s signature “Big, Beautiful Bill” — a sweeping America First legislative package aimed at slashing wasteful spending and ending taxpayer-funded handouts to noncitizens.
One of the key provisions in the bill? Defunding Medicaid for illegal aliens, refugees, and asylum seekers.
BREAKING: Defunding Medicare for noncitizens, refugees, asylum seekers is BACK IN the Big Beautiful Bill…Senate Republicans managed to work AROUND the Democrat Senate Parliamentarian’s prior ruling, per Punchbowl.
GOOD!
Now, FIRE HER once this passes! No more! pic.twitter.com/thCudLUaKw
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) June 29, 2025
But apparently, that was too much for Senator Tillis.
Tillis tried to justify his no vote by touting his past life in “management consulting” and his old Speaker days in North Carolina.
Tillis whined that the bill’s Medicaid reforms would hurt North Carolina by cutting billions in provider taxes.
Tillis brazenly claimed that Trump would “break his promise” to Medicaid recipients — comparing Trump’s reforms to Barack Obama’s infamous lie: “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”
Tillis: Republicans are about to make a mistake on health care and betray a promise. It is inescapable that this bill in its current form will betray the very promise that Donald J. Trump made in the Oval Office—or in the Cabinet Room, when I was there with Finance—where he said, “We can go after waste, fraud, and abuse on any programs.”
Now, those amateurs that are advising him—not Dr. Oz, I’m talking about White House health care experts—refuse to tell him that those instructions to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse all of a sudden eliminate a government program that’s called the provider tax. We have morphed a legal construct that admittedly has been abused and should be eliminated into “waste, fraud, and abuse”—money laundering.
WATCH:
The facts matter. The people matter. The Senate’s Medicaid approach breaks promises and will kick people off of Medicaid who truly need it. The Senate can make one simple fix to make sure that won’t happen. pic.twitter.com/zvW1AgCxBF
— Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) June 30, 2025
