Trump foe threatens to reveal president’s phone number if doxxed
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Republican Sen. Thom Tillis suggested that he was not afraid to share President Donald Trump’s phone number after the commander-in-chief doxxed a fellow GOP senator on Truth Social.
The outgoing North Carolina senator, currently promoting his forthcoming book How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents, made the remark on Monday’s The View when one of the hosts referenced how Trump shared the cell phone number of Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton.
Tillis, one of Trump’s most outspoken GOP critics after the two clashed over the “Big, Beautiful Bill” last year, issued the threat after he was asked about the publication of expletive private text messages with the president in his book.
“In the book, you include some private exchanges with the president after he called you a ‘loser’ and took credit for forcing you out of the Senate, actually,” Sunny Hostin said to Tillis. “You claim to have written him denying his account and saying, ‘I would have immediately told you to go blank yourself’ and ‘I don’t take this BS from anyone, including you, Mr. President.’ Did you hear back from him?”
Tillis told Hostin, “Actually, we’ve talked or texted back and forth several times since then,” before Anna Navarro interjected by saying, “He’s gonna give your phone away after this!”
With a stern expression and without a laugh, Tillis quipped, “With all due respect, I have his number, too,” prompting nervous laughter from the panel and applause from the studio audience.
In the book, Tillis refuted the president’s claim that he forced him out of the Senate. He wrote that he would not accept Trump’s “bull****” and, if the president had threatened him, he would have promptly told him to “f*** yourself.”
Despite their differences, Tillis told the co-hosts that he still believes that Trump is a “great political force.”
Trump posted Cotton’s personal cell phone number to pressure him into supporting the Sunshine Protection Act – a bill that passed the House in July to make daylight saving time permanent.
“For some reason, Tom is stopping the Bill and, in the Senate, it's very easy to do, it only takes one!” Trump posted on Truth Social. Part of his argument in favor of the bill is that it would give professional golfers more time on the greens. “The PGA TOUR, as an example, needs more Daylight in the afternoon in order to finish their Tournaments,” the president argued.
“Almost everybody wants “The Sunshine Protection Act” to pass, except for Tom Cotton,” Trump continued in the lengthy post. “To the Great People of Arkansas, please let your Senator know it would be a GREAT Bipartisan WIN for the United States Senate, and for America, itself.”
Cotton responded to the threat Saturday on social media, where he doubled down on his position.
“No one likes changing the clock, me included, but Congress has enacted permanent Daylight Savings Time multiple times before and repealed it each time once Americans experienced absurdly late sunrises in the winter,” he said. “Arkansans don’t want their kids going to school in the pitch dark, and I’ll always put Arkansas first.”
