Thom Tillis has some advice for a struggling Michael Whatley

This opinion piece first appeared in The Raleigh News and Observer, August 6, 2026

Thom Tillis has some advice for Michael Whatley: don’t be afraid to push back against President Donald Trump.

 Whatley, of course, is Trump’s handpicked successor to Tillis in the U.S. Senate. But first, he needs to get elected, and his association with the deeply unpopular president will make that difficult.

The Hill reported this week that Senate Republicans increasingly view Trump as a political liability, particularly as GOP candidates trail their Democratic opponents in North Carolina and other key states. When asked if Whatley should distance himself from Trump, Tillis said, “I don’t want him to be artificial, but if there are things that he thinks that he would do differently, I think he should have the courage to speak up.”

Tillis used the controversial $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund as an example.

“If he believes, for example, the 1776 fund was a bad idea, he should speak up about it,” Tillis said. “I know in North Carolina most people think it’s a bad idea.” Whatley, at least publicly, does not. Whereas Tillis has been a vocal opponent of the fund since it was announced, Whatley has voiced support for it. There are a number of other unpopular policies that Whatley could speak up about, too, such as tariffs, the Iran war, Medicaid cuts and mass deportations. Whatley has explicitly or implicitly supported all of them.

Now, Tillis is a savvy politician, but he may not be the best person to offer advice about winning elections, despite the fact that he has never lost one. In his own Senate campaigns, he never found himself in the position that Whatley is now, as the inferior candidate in a formidable national environment. He was elected in 2014 on the coattails of a historic red wave, and squeaked out a victory in 2020 largely due to a late scandal from his opponent, Cal Cunningham.

While Whatley’s embrace of Trump and his policies was of benefit to him in the Republican primary, it will drag him down in the general election, because November will be a referendum on Trump’s presidency. Perhaps Tillis understands that challenge because he’s faced it himself. Tillis famously and frequently fought himself when it came to Trump, particularly in 2020, because he knew he needed to show independence to moderate voters while not angering Trump’s base. Threading that needle is tricky even in a political environment favorable to Republicans, and this is not one.

There are signs that Whatley is trying to slightly downplay his association to Trump, at least to the general public. While he used to be all Trump, all the time on the campaign trail, he now seems to be mentioning the president a lot less. Visitors to Whatley’s campaign website are no longer greeted by a massive photo of Trump and Whatley — it’s been moved further down the page.

But Whatley can’t outrun his ties to Trump by simply ignoring them, and voters won’t be fooled by it, either. Of all the Republicans running in competitive Senate races, Whatley may be in the biggest bind when it comes to the president. His support for Trump’s agenda isn’t just an ideology — it’s his identity. Yes, Republican nominees in Texas, Iowa and Ohio are allies of Trump, and they, too, have secured the president’s endorsement. But unlike those candidates — which include a state attorney general, a three-term congresswoman, and a sitting U.S. senator — Whatley has not yet cultivated a political profile of his own. He can’t point to past votes or legislative accomplishments, because he’s never held elected office. His relationship to Trump is mostly what he has to run on.

Tillis is probably correct that more distance from Trump would benefit Whatley’s campaign. But Whatley will likely never take the advice. Because what Tillis is really suggesting is that Whatley be a different kind of candidate than he’s been — one with the courage and freedom to think for himself.

Deputy Opinion Editor Paige Masten covers politics and the 2026 elections for The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer.