Republican Sen. Thom Tillis brought popcorn to a lunch meeting with top Senate Republicans and President Donald Trump.

The senator was poking fun at the escalating feud between Trump and Sen. Bob Corker, a prominent Republican who on Tuesday accused Trump of "debasing" the nation.





Republican Sen. Thom Tillis brought popcorn to a lunch meeting with top Senate Republicans and President Donald Trump on Tuesday, poking fun at the escalating feud between Sen. Bob Corker and Trump.

During an appearance on Fox Business Network on Tuesday, Tillis said he would bring popcorn to the meeting, and he followed through with the stunt, tweeting out photos of himself filling a bag from a Senate popcorn machine.

—Senator Thom Tillis (@SenThomTillis) October 24, 2017

Corker, who is retiring from the Senate seat he has held since 2007, has been openly critical of Trump for the past several months and on Tuesday told reporters that Trump "has great difficulty with the truth," is not a role model, and will be remembered most for "debasing" the nation.

Trump has lashed out at Corker repeatedly, claiming that the senator is an "incompetent" politician and a "lightweight" who declined to run for reelection after Trump refused to endorse him. (Corker says that Trump encouraged him to run and privately promised to endorse him several times.)

Tillis told Fox host Neil Cavuto that while he could not remember an instance of a president openly denigrating a member of his own party, he seemed to view the feud as a temporary distraction.

"At some point we need to get back again to the task at hand," he said.

Tillis argued that behind closed doors and off of social media, constructive dialogue will resume.

"It'll be interesting to watch," Tillis said, "but you know at the end of the day I think getting people into a room and talking about it we get out of the Twitter and social media personas to people in a room who still are unified in our need to pass tax reform."