Tillis Calls Trump Paxton Endorsement Colossal Mistake
Left 75%
Center 0%
Right 25%
3 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
On Sunday, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said on CNN's "State of the Union" that President Donald Trump made a "colossal mistake" by endorsing Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton over Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) in the Republican Senate primary. Paxton defeated four-term incumbent Cornyn in the May primary after Trump endorsed Paxton days before the vote and, in a social-media post, called Cornyn "VERY disloyal" for having argued during the 2024 presidential campaign that Republicans should move on from Trump. Paxton advanced to the November 3 general election against Democratic state legislator James Talarico. Tillis, who is retiring, called Cornyn "a great member of the U.S. Senate," said Paxton "has his challenges," labeled the result an "unforced error," and said Republicans "would not be spending tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in Texas if Cornyn had won."
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Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage leaves out the fact that makes Tillis's complaint bite. The left write-ups, including the Guardian and The Hill, skip Tillis saying Cornyn voted with the president 99 percent of the time. What they do carry is the attack on the Paxton endorsement and, in the Guardian, the extra money now required in Texas. Without that voting record, the story is a retiring critic scolding Trump, not a claim that loyalty politics dumped a near-lockstep ally.
Right-leaning coverage stays inside the interview. It leads, in Breitbart, with Tillis calling Texas an unforced error and saying the president now needs to put money behind Paxton. Left-leaning coverage, particularly in the Guardian, instead stacks Paxton's 2023 impeachment, a later dismissed fraud case, and Tillis's other breaks over NATO and a war-powers vote.
How much has the party actually spent in Texas since Cornyn lost the primary?
Bottom line
A Guardian reader never learns Tillis's 99 percent claim, which is the difference between Trump picking a flawed candidate and Trump punishing an ally who almost always voted with him.
The receipts — 6 facts one side's coverage lacks
- Tillis said Cornyn voted with the president over 98 or 99 percent of the time
- Tillis said now is not the time for these loyalty oaths and that Republicans need to get elected
- Tillis said Trump did not force him out and that he was already moving toward retirement
- Paxton was impeached in 2023 on corruption accusations and later acquitted in the Texas senate
- Trump wrote that Cornyn had been VERY disloyal and told Texas voters to REMEMBER
- Cornyn said during the 2024 presidential campaign that Republicans should move on from Trump
The Left View
Left-leaning outlets frame Tillis's remarks as a rebuke of Trump for jeopardizing a Republican Senate seat by punishing Cornyn and elevating Paxton. The Guardian fills in the "challenges" Tillis named: Paxton's 2023 impeachment on corruption accusations and later acquittal in the Texas Senate, a felony securities-fraud indictment dismissed after a 2024 pretrial diversion agreement, and his wife's July 2025 divorce filing "on biblical grounds," citing adultery. It adds that a Talarico win would be the first Democratic statewide victory in Texas in more than 30 years. The Hill says Tillis "blasted" the president; the Guardian calls him "a frequent Trump critic" and cites prior breaks over NATO, a homeland-security secretary, and a war-powers vote to present this comment as part of a pattern of intra-GOP dissent.
The Right View
Breitbart reports the interview as a strategic critique of loyalty tests, quoting Tillis that after "1 or 2 disagreements with the president" — even though Cornyn voted with him "over 98, 99% of the time" — "now is not the time for these loyalty oaths. Now is the time for Republicans to get elected." Tillis called Texas "an unforced error created by the president" and said Trump "needs to invest in there to make sure Paxton wins," while stating that in his own case Trump "didn't force me out" and that he was already heading toward retirement. The coverage does not dwell on Paxton's legal history and treats the problem as a resource drain the president should now help close.
Our Take (balanced)
The left's strongest argument is Tillis's own language — "colossal mistake," "unforced error," and the claim that tens or hundreds of millions would not be needed had Cornyn won — plus the record left outlets attach to "challenges" (impeachment, a dismissed fraud case, a divorce filing). The right's strongest argument, from the same interview, is that Cornyn's 98–99 percent voting alignment makes the primary a loyalty-oath excess, and that Tillis's own close is not to abandon Paxton but for Trump to invest so he wins. The central unresolved tension is whether the endorsement is primarily a self-inflicted map problem caused by punishing a near-total ally, or a party shift toward MAGA purity that even this critic still expects the GOP to finance in November.
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