Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) can’t believe President Donald Trump and a handful of other Republicans are trying to sweep the Epstein files under the rug after they spent years talking them up.
In an interview with Charlotte’s WBT News Talk on Wednesday, the outgoing senator offered a blunt assessment of his party’s bizarre eagerness to move on.
“Maybe I’m just getting old, but I could’ve sworn that we had people campaigning and [saying], ‘If I get elected, we’re going to release the files,’ right? Release the damn files! Get over it!” he told the hosts of “Good Morning BT.”
“There’s one of two outcomes that occur,” he predicted. “One outcome is that it’s a nothing-burger and people should be embarrassed by making it a something-burger when running for election. The other outcome: It is a something-burger and people should go to prison.”
Tillis then called out Trump directly for attempting to dismiss the actions of Epstein, a disgraced billionaire and convicted sex offender who died under suspicious circumstances while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, as “boring.”
“I have to disagree with the president,” he said. “I don’t think human trafficking of young teenage girls being exploited by billionaires on a private island is boring.”
“I think it’s despicable and I believe that anybody who had anything to do with it or knowledge of it should be held accountable,” he added. “So just release the damn files.”
Trump and Tillis have been at odds with one another lately, with Trump publicly calling Tillis out on social media after Tillis privately expressed misgivings about the size of the Medicaid cuts in Trump’s signature bill.
Tillis responded to the provocation by declaring he wouldn’t run for reelection, thereby robbing Trump of his leverage.
“If somebody wants to know why I’m not running, it’s because some bonehead told [Trump] to post something and pretend like that was going to affect me,” Tillis told Semafor on Tuesday, reflecting on Trump’s social media attack.
“It affected me in a way that said: ‘I’m done with this bullshit.’”