Thomas Tillis

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina is sounding the alarm about the future of his own party. In his new book, “How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents,” Tillis warns that GOP lawmakers are afraid to challenge President Trump, Congress is surrendering its power, and some of the president's closest advisers are leading him toward failure. Tillis joined Geoff Bennett to discuss more.

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Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina is sounding the alarm about the future of his own party.

In his new book, "How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents, Tillis warns that Republican lawmakers are afraid to challenge President Trump, that Congress is surrendering its power, and some of the president's closest advisers are leading him toward failure.

And Senator Tillis joins us now from North Carolina.

And you write in this book that, unless more Republicans are willing to voice their concerns about the White House, that the country could be headed into what you call perilous waters. What concerns you the most about the direction of this administration right now?

The lack of a feedback loop with Congress, really dating back to when I wrote a letter to my colleagues in the Senate Republican Conference back in April of 2025.

I tried to warn that, if we were not active participants in formulation, execution, and timing of policy, that I was afraid we were going to make the same mistakes that Obama did. And we're seeing the same thing. We did not have that feedback loop. We got a little bit of ahead of our blockers.

The voters can only absorb so much change over a period of time, and I think we exceeded their capacity, and that's a part of what's driving people to the polls.

In your book, you estimate that at least 30 Republican senators privately share your concerns about President Trump. And that's an enormous amount of political power, especially when the president's approval ratings are in the low 30s.

If those senators stood together, wouldn't they have more leverage over the president than he has over any one of them? Why aren't they using it?

That was what I was trying to get at last year, last April. And I also said in my communication to my colleagues that we will know everything that we need to know about the environment by early first -- fourth quarter last year.

And we did. We could see that things were not moving quite in the direction that we should have. And that was really our last chance, in my opinion, to recalibrate before we were going to have -- the only thing we'd have there is lessen the maybe negative impact of the election cycle.

But I believe this was pretty much baked by the fourth quarter that we were going to have challenges. And back to the point of 30, I will also tell you, on any given day, there are probably 30 Democrat members that don't like what leadership is sending them, and yet they capitulate.

The point that I was trying to make is, if we didn't have that separation, then it was also going to expose the president. And I communicated that to the president. I told him, when we were moving too quickly on the so-called Big Beautiful Bill, that, if we weren't careful, he was going to have two of the most miserable years of his life.

And what I meant by that was an election outcome that I don't want. I want President Trump to be successful. I want Republicans to have the gavel, but you have got to be smart, you have got to be strategic. And that separation has only existed in -- episodically.

So, there's maybe one thing concerned a member and they push back a bit. But we needed a consistent, separate, but equal sort of posture with the president to help him implement policies that on their face were probably OK. It was the timing and how they went about it that became a problem for the voters.

In your view, what's the clearest example of something that the Republican-controlled Congress allowed President Trump to do that they should have stopped?

I think the Big Beautiful Bill is probably the best example, because that's an example of where, if we had just passed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that basically make permanent what we passed in 2017, we would have had a huge win that we would be running on right now.

But we -- but we passed health care bills. You're already seeing the narrative that the health care portion of the bill was the problematic portion that I believe was going to cause some headwinds in this cycle, even more in the 2028 cycle. That was probably the best example.

I think another one could have been we may have been able to help the president from what I consider to be largely -- I lay the blame at the feet of Pete Hegseth for the execution of the war with Iran. We should have fairly quickly said, we're glad you went in there, like I told the president. I'm glad he did. He's the first president to have the guts to do it.

But we needed an after-action, and we should have pressed on either the war powers resolution or very clear communication to Congress sooner. And the president should have communicated to the American people why it was important for him to do what he did. That's another one where we have lost the narrative. And all people think about is the fact that it's cost them $20, $30 more to fill up their gas tank.

Regarding Secretary Hegseth, whom you mentioned, you have called your vote for him one of the biggest regrets of your Senate career. You had serious reservations about his qualifications and judgment before the vote. What caused you to set those concerns aside?

A unanimous vote from every person on the Senate Armed Services Committee, up to and including one member who had expressed some concerns.

I served on the Senate Armed Services Committee for eight years. And I decided with the -- with any of the nominations that came out of committees that I wasn't on, on the committee of jurisdiction, that I would put a lot of weight on a unanimous vote, even if it was a party-line vote.

And I did spend the week after -- that he was voted out of committee and before we voted on the floor really trying to find evidence to substantiate the allegations that came out after his confirmation vote. My goal there was to find information that may be compelling that would convince other members of Armed Services that we may need to hold on voting, if not withdraw his nomination.

But I could not get that information. So all I had was a committee hearing full of glowing statements about Pete Hegseth and a party-line vote. And I wasn't going to counter that. I know it's easy for everybody to say that -- I don't view things and you can't view things at atomic level when you're a U.S. senator, particularly if you're a serious one who legislates.

I think about the relationship that I have with that committee and many other things that were going on, and I didn't simply want to look like I was bowing to pressure and going against the majority of my colleagues, a unanimous majority of my colleagues who voted them out of committee. So I deferred to them, and I regret that.

The fact of the matter is, though, if I were presented with the same circumstances, I'd vote the same way again.

Does Secretary Hegseth, in your view, deserve to be impeached?

You know, I hope the president will simply fire him or get him to move on. And after the election, I think that we're clearly going to take some losses. I still hold out the hope that we can have a slim majority in the Senate. I believe that the House is lost. It's a matter of what the margins are going to be.

I think the president should take stock. He should look at the -- some of the root causes behind this rejection. If the president thinks that the losses next week are about the candidates, I think he's got it completely wrong. This is about a national environment that's been created in part by his administration and amplified by some of the members w