In an interview with POLITICO‘s Dasha Burns, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) said he “may actually be a RINO.”

“I think for the first time in my life, I may actually be a RINO,” Tillis said.

“The Republican Party has drifted so far away from limited government, free markets and federalism,” he continued.

Tillis claimed Republicans are “drifting from that” and, by doing so, makes the party “no different than the Democrats.”

During the conversation, Burns called President Trump a “disruptor” to the Republican Party.

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“I want the president to be successful. I’m a business person. I work on a transaction basis. I could sit down with him and come up with things that I’d love to support him on,” Tillis said.

“I think that’s the mistake that some people have made here. They just get so frustrated that maybe they realized they weren’t Republican. So then they become backbenchers who are constantly criticizing,” he continued.

“Again, I support the majority of what this administration is trying to do. They have highly competent people in roles, and I’m glad that they’re there. But elections are all around the margins, and we are way out of the margins of, I think, proper execution and things that are going to influence this election if we don’t get our collective stuff together in the coming 30, 60, 90 days,” Tillis continued.

“If we’re still in this sort of narrative and chaos in June, then not only do I think we risk losing the House, but I do believe that the U.S. Senate could be in play, and I’m doing everything I can to prevent that,” he added.

Footage below:

Notably, Tillis is retiring from the upper legislative chamber and won’t seek re-election in the 2026 midterms.

Roll Call explained:

Thom Tillis has always said that he hates the camera. Then he announced his retirement last year.

Now, the moderate Republican from North Carolina cannot stop making headlines.

In a fiery floor speech earlier this year, Tillis said he was leaving the Senate to remove himself from any “boundaries I should have in expressing my concern and creating complications for my campaign” and Senate Republicans maintaining the majority.

His retirement, which he announced last June, allows him to “speak truth” to President Donald Trump about White House policies and advice from Trump’s staff, he said earlier this month. But, the two-term senator also lamented that he was “sick of stupid” coming from the Oval Office.

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That stream of honesty has turned into a firehose aimed towards Trump’s White House, leading to an increasingly personal back-and-forth between Tillis and the president during a time when Trump will certainly need his vote.

It came to a head earlier this week when Trump referred to Tillis as a “loser” during an interview with ABC News, to which the senator replied, “Apparently that qualifies me for DHS secretary and senior adviser to the president!”

Online, people have referred to the North Carolina senator as “Tillis unleashed.”

In some ways, he is feeling unleashed: “I think what it comes down to is, obviously, I don’t have to look through a political lens anymore,” he said Thursday.

Tillis criticized Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller for “incompetence.”

“Stephen Miller never fails to live up to my expectations of incompetence,” Tillis said.

“She [Noem] has taken this administration into the ground on an issue that we should own. We should own the issue of border security and immigration, but they have destroyed that for Republicans. Something that got the president elected. They have destroyed it through their incompetence,” he continued.

Check it out:

Watch the full interview with Dasha Burns below:

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