Thom Tillis Tells POLITICO's Jonathan Martin the GOP Is Headed for a 'Train Wreck'

POLITICO's The Playbook Podcast on Saturday, Oct. 24, 2026, carried a 44-minute interview in which retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) tells politics bureau chief Jonathan Martin that Republicans are on course for heavy losses in the Nov. 3 midterm elections and that President Donald Trump's advisers should be replaced. The episode, titled "Retiring Republican senator warns GOP: Trump's coalition may not last | On the Road," carries an Oct. 24 release date in its Apple Podcasts listing.

The conversation was first released Tuesday, Oct. 20, on Martin's series On the Road with Jonathan Martin, alongside a POLITICO video version and an edited transcript published as a POLITICO Magazine column. According to the episode description, Tillis "joins POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin at a Charlotte diner for a candid conversation about his new book, his decision to leave the Senate and the future of the Republican Party."

A diner interview built around a new book

Martin recorded the interview at the Carolina Family Restaurant near Charlotte Douglas International Airport, which he describes in the column as "a 50-year-old institution close to CLT." The occasion was Tillis's memoir, How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents, which HarperCollins lists as a 224-page book published Oct. 6, 2026, according to its Google Books catalog entry.

When the book was released, the Associated Press reported that Tillis calls his deciding vote to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in January 2025 the "biggest regret of my career," according to the AP story as published by PBS News. That vote produced a 50-50 tie that Vice President JD Vance broke, the AP reported. The AP also noted that Tillis announced in June 2025 that he would not seek reelection after breaking with Trump over the president's tax and spending package.

In the podcast, Martin presses Tillis on why he voted for nominees he now criticizes, including Hegseth, Kristi Noem, Tulsi Gabbard and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "I regret having confirmed them in the same way I regretted a hiring decision I made for somebody I had to fire," Tillis says, according to POLITICO's transcript. He adds: "Based on the circumstances at that time, I would make the same decision."

Asked whether Trump should fire Hegseth now, Tillis answers, "Yeah." He also says "Gabbard just was inconsequential" and that "Noem was consequential in a really bad way."

Midterm forecast and the Senate map

Tillis tells Martin he expects a difficult night for his party but believes Republicans can keep the Senate. "No, I still believe we can hold on to the Senate. I think it’s gonna be tight," he says. "But I could see us finishing with 50 or 51 members."

Martin writes that Tillis is "keeping a countdown clock on his phone to 'whoop-ass,'" a reference to Election Day. When Martin asks whether relying on advisers to manage the president is "a hell of a way to run a railroad," Tillis replies: "Hey, look, it’s exactly why we’re headed to — to continue the analogy — a train wreck in November."

Tillis also discusses the race for his own seat. Of Republican nominee Michael Whatley, a former Republican National Committee chair, he says, "I think Michael’s problem is he’s got a patently partisan resume," and adds, "We needed probably a more moderate type of profile." Newsweek, which covered the interview on Oct. 20, reported that Trump rallied for Whatley in Greenville, North Carolina, the same day and cited a WRAL/WSOC poll showing Democrat Roy Cooper leading Whatley 54 percent to 40 percent among likely voters.

Advisers, the Trump coalition and 2028

The central argument of the interview is that the people around Trump, rather than Trump himself, should change. "What you can do is fire his advisers, and his advisers being changed will change his behavior," Tillis says. Martin challenges that framing by listing decisions he attributes to Trump personally, including tariffs, and says, "the president himself has got agency."

On the party's long-term direction, Tillis says Trump "created a coalition that, in my opinion, will not stay with Republicans once we go back to traditional Republican platform priorities." He also says, "I wasn’t going to be a Never Trumper because I’m not a Never Trumper. I support most of his policies." Asked whether he would vote for Trump again if he could, Tillis answers, "I probably would."

The Tillis conversation is the latest entry in On the Road, which its Apple Podcasts show page describes as "a series of wide-ranging conversations with key players in American politics on the ground in their home states." Earlier episodes featured Sen. Susan Collins in Maine, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.