Like Senator Cornyn of Texas, Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina helped himself to a Trumpian TACO. It seems the popular acronym TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) applies just as well to Tillis. As in Tillis Always Chickens out!
Lawrence O’Donnell was right last night when he said both (who’d accepted Blanche’s bullshit about formally killing the Trump Slush Fund) were more concerned with DC lobbying careers than doing the right thing. As I told Sen. Tillis’ office staffer Blanche’s promise isn’t worth the paper it isn’t (and won’t be) written on. In the end for all his tough talk Tillis flat-out chickened out. However I made the point it’s about more than the Trump Slush Fund. It’s about Epstein too.
Yep, Blanche got an earful during his Senate Judiciary about the slush fund but Epstein came up too. The whole sordid business about not publishing the full Epstein files (as required by law) and the appalling kid gloves treatment he’s afforded Ghislaine Maxwell came up too. Tillis actually promised to do what he’d urged Blanche to do – meet with survivors. However as we learn from Alternet Tillis broke the promise he made and blew them off!
That’s right. In a hallway conversation Tillis literally directed some of them to his office around the corner from the elevator he was boarding. He said he had to ‘rush off’ to a meeting but would see them when he was done. They went. And waited. For naught. See the promise for yourself:
In case you missed it, here’s the video where he clearly agreed to meet with them, only to stand them up in his office. Beyond disrespectful and cowardly pic.twitter.com/VzDKk5Li8a
— Cheyenne Hunt (@CheyenneHuntCA) August 4, 2026
The promise was clear. Tillis had to know he was being filmed. Yet he still broke his promise. In retrospect that should have made it clear that for all his supposedly strong reservations that would prevent him from voting Blanche out of the hearing to a final vote on the Senate floor he’d cave in the end. Maybe Trump sent over a plate of Tacos… Tillis is quite well off and could spend the rest of his life in a quiet, comfortable retirement back home when his term is done. If he spent the remainder of his term doing the right thing Trump would of course try to ruin Tillis’ post Senate life with Truth Social attacks but they would quickly get lost in the noise.
Tillis however is trying to have it both ways. He wants to talk the talk of standing up to Trump but like say Susan Collins doesn’t have it in his character to walk the walk. He wants to make a bunch more money lobbying so he’s trying to set himself up to both sides of the aisle. If that takes blowing off justice for Epstein survivors then so be it. However I don’t think they are going to let go of this betrayal. Lawyer and activist Cheyanne Hunt let Tillis have it with both barrels and I have no doubt is already ‘reloading’:
“The treatment we received from senators throughout this process was just as revealing,” the statement read. “Senator Tillis publicly invited us, on camera, to come to his office and promised to meet with us. We did. We waited for 45 minutes in his lobby, only to be told by a staffer he would not meet with us after all. Senator Cornyn also refused to hear directly from survivors before casting his vote. Senators Tillis and Cornyn were not willing to sit across from us and answer for the vote they were preparing to cast. If they believed they were doing the right thing, they should have had the courage to look survivors in the eye and tell us why. The message was unmistakable: they wanted us to go.”
Tillis (and Cornyn) still have one more chance to display the courage of the convictions they so strongly expressed. They could vote no during the actual final confirmation vote on the floor of the Senate. Don’t count on it. For now TACO applies to Tillis as much as it does to Trump. (And Cornyn is eating Trump TACOs too)
