Firing Line

Sick of sycophants?

This week on "Firing Line."

We have to overcome this period of populism that has really unmoored us from most of the principles of the Republican Party.

North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis has distinguished himself in Washington with blunt criticism of President Trump's second administration.

And what we've seen is a disaster.

Under your leadership, Ms.

Noem, a disaster.

He still supports Trump, blaming those advising him, whom he calls sycophants in his new book.

He voted to confirm all of Trump's cabinet, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The Senate being equally divided, the vice president votes in the affirmative and the nomination is confirmed.

Which he now calls the biggest regret of his career.

I really didn't think he was going to be up to the task.

And I think the last year and a half has proven that my instincts were right.

With Trump's approval at historic lows and Republicans facing a reckoning in next month's midterms, what does Senator Thom Tillis say now?

"Firing Line with Margaret Hoover" is made possible in part by... and by the following... Senator Thom Tillis, welcome to "Firing Line."

Glad to be here.

After 12 years of serving North Carolina in the United States Senate, you'll be retiring in January.

You have written a book, "How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents, the Trouble with Sycophants, Courage Outsourcing, and Partisan Groupthink.

The book is filled with anger, profanity, name-calling, exasperation, and, as you say, regret.

- Yeah, kind of like the Trump administration.

You know, I've tried for the last year and a half to sound the alarm bell for the negative environment that we now find ourselves in.

My point now is to let everybody recognize that we have a challenge, our brand has a challenge, there's going to be consequences in November and we got to work on recovery.

A part of what I was trying to communicate is that every time Washington is controlled by one party, the party in power views it as a mandate, they lose sight of the reality that the populace just gave us a chance to govern and they overreach.

When you have somebody that the press is talking about having increased their net worth by a billion dollars over the last 12 months, and you go on television and say affordability is a hoax, which was the first reaction, you're losing votes when you do that.

President Trump is a master political figure in my opinion.

He brings together coalitions like nobody in Republican world ever has, up to and including Ronald Reagan.

But then he starts making statements that in my opinion are going to erode the very group of people that brought him into power.

So to that point, the President in a rally in Nebraska just this week predicted a quick end to the war in Iran and said they can take out a city, let them take out Los Angeles, let them take out San Diego.

And then the White House clarified that he meant a nuclear-armed Iran could threaten American cities.

I've tried to explain to the President, I don't think the President meant it the way people took it, but the President needs to understand his words oftentimes are taken literally in a very profound way.

And he needs to understand that when he's speaking to the American people.

He is the second most powerful person in the world in charge of the most powerful nation on the planet.

Sorry, who's number one if it's not him?

Xi Jinping, because he can basically run roughshod over everybody.

So he arguably is more powerful, it's just that he's in charge of a nation that's not as powerful as the United States.

That probably bothers the president, but the reality is Xi Jinping can do whatever he wants to to whoever he wants to with a massive country to back him up.

But the bottom line is the president needs to understand the weight of his word.

So you think it was a political mistake that he said we could take out two American cities or that Iran could take out two American cities?

Yeah.

I think he should explain it in different words.

But the president just needs to, I think, have a kinder, more gentle tone to him when he's trying to communicate these things.

He's communicating like a businessman.

And in a business circle, I love that sort of direct communications because he's working with people that should be studied up and they can digest it.

But now you got to work to the least common denominator people go, "Really?

I mean, LA or?"

It's a different world that he's living in.

So then he's not a political master.

In that respect, he's not.

You're right.

He's a political master about filling a stadium and getting to the things that presses all the buttons of this base that he's created.

Now, I'll be honest with you, I'm not happy with some of the base that he's created.

What don't you like?

I'm not happy with people who have cast states' rights aside and want to federalize things.

I'm not happy with people who think it's okay to have equity stakes and 10 or more publicly traded companies basically making them state-owned enterprises.

Does anybody really think any other board member's vote counts if the U.S.

government is a 10% equity investor?

I don't like that.

I don't like these turn your back on Europe, Ukraine's their problem sort of thinking.

So these are the things that are a part of a coalition that I just assume them go back wherever they were and then let traditional Republicans and conservatives start running the country and managing the brand.

You and I both know that Trump is not a traditional conservative, or a traditional Republican.

And so he's been able to build this coalition to have ideas that you disagree with.

- Yeah.

- And yet you consistently refuse to tarnish Donald Trump and instead blame what you call in the book maggots.

- Yeah Trump's sycophants.

- M-A-G-A-T-S Trump's sycophants and the Trump's sycophants are the ones who are to blame for all of the bad stuff.

The cover of the book has Pete Hegseth, Kristi Noem, Bobby Kennedy Jr., who illustrate the maggots and point to them for the failures in Trump 2.0 compared to Trump 1.0.

Mm-hmm.

He appointed both cabinets.

Donald Trump did.

And I voted to confirm them.

I know.

But why did he choose a different caliber of individual for his second-term cabinet than his first-term cabinet?

You know, I don't know.

I don't think he went in and said, "I really want one that's gonna not look around corners and really make the political cycle in the midterm awful."

I don't think that that was a goal.

I think these people are -- What was the goal, then?

I think that the goal was to get the economy on steroids like we did in his first term, and to reduce the size of government and address immigration.

These people just did the what were all laudable.

The how is a demonstration of people who simply don't have experience of implementing in the context of a democratic institution.

Maybe they were successful business people.

Many of them were.

They're just not up to this task.

I want to move on, but I just want to put a pin in it.

It's really, really clear that you don't hold the president accountable for the things that have happened on his watch in the presidency.

After the State of the Union 2024, when Biden tried to cast blame on others for the problems facing the country, you were very clear that it was President Biden's fault.

You said the reality is the only person Biden has to blame is himself.

So why is Biden held to one standard and Trump to a different standard?

It's a good question.

Maybe because he's a Democrat and maybe because he was a zombie in the last two years of his four-year administration.

That sounds a lot like the partisan groupthink you were telling us about in the subtitle.

No, the partisan groupthink... How is that not partisan groupthink?

Partisan groupthink... Like, really?

You hold him to a different standard because he's a Democrat?

I'm talking specifically to members of Congress, this partisan groupthink.

I'm not talking about the sycophants in this book.

Look, he won the popular election.

He is a Republican president.

Am I going to give him a little bit more credit than a Democratic president?

Obviously.

So I don't know.

It may very well be that the president was looking for other people and these people were not his first choice, but they're the only ones who were willing to do it because those people knew that someday they'd have to stand up to the president.

There's an argument that the president wanted yes men, that he doesn't like to be challenged.

Oh, the president likes yes men.

So perhaps he chose this cabinet because they were going to rubber stamp his agenda.

I have a theory about your reflexive defense of Donald Trump.

And it's that you write in the book that the Republican Party and Trump's legacy are inextricably linked, and that almost everything you do-- you write this-- that almost everything you do is aimed at safeguarding both.

Right, because they are intrinsically linked.

Right, so it sounds-- it feels like your reflexive defense of Trump is an attempt to protect the Republican Party and the brand that you associate with and the principles you believe it should stand for, even when Donald Trump abandons those principles.

Yeah, because it's a distra-- Look, at the end of the day, I want to go back to limited government, free market, federalism, pro-Second Amendment, pro-life, conservative party.

That is what I believe in.

That is what I have always believed in.

And that is what I will believe in until the day I die.

And we have to overcome this period of populism that has really unmoored us from most of the principles of the Republican Party that I came to know back in 1978 as a young Republican.

And yeah, everybody that I defend there, I only defend them because they happen to be in roles that are important to us achieving that outcome of saving the Republican Party and continuing to be competitive at the national level and in these swing states.

If President Trump's legacy is inextricably linked to the Republican Party, you recognize that those two things are really at cross purposes.

Yeah, I mean, the election result could potentially even change my posture about what do I need to do to save the Republican Party in the wake of whatever occurs on election day.

What is perhaps predicted to be a massive disaster.

Yeah, I still think we've got a shot at keeping the Senate, but I do believe the House is lost.

Okay, the very beginning of your book starts by saying, "Voting to confirm Pete Hexeth is the biggest regret of my career."

You write that you disagreed with Trump repeatedly in the first term.

Yeah.

On Mueller, on the border wall, on Trump's public statements.

And you survived those disagreements.

- Yeah.

- But by the time of the Hegseth vote, you say, "Things had changed, and Trump had made your vote a test of loyalty."

First, you were a no vote, and then you were a yes vote.

What happened between the time that you were a no vote and then became a yes vote?

Everybody needs to keep track of the timing.

So I'd arrived at a decision, communicated to the conference, "If you guys vote this guy unanimously out of committee, then I'm a presumptive yes."

But then we had that allegation come in after he'd been voted out of committee, which looked real to me.

And I spent a week... The whole reason that came to light is I said, "Look, this allegation needs more work."

I'm already a presumptive yes, but if I can find a smoking gun here, I may not be.

Let me catch the audience up.

The allegation you're referring to is the allegation from Pete Hegseth's ex-sister-in-law, who came forward with accusations that Pete Hegseth had been abusive to his ex-wife.

And she even went on the record and had a sworn affidavit based on your encouragement to do so.

I said, "You need to do that, and I still need to corroborate your account."

Because I was remembering Brett Kavanaugh when somebody swore an affidavit that I believe is absolutely false.

And after I saw what happened to Brett Kavanaugh, there was no way I was going to do that to Hegseth, even though I really didn't think he was going to be up to the task, and I think the last year and a half has proven that my instincts were right.

But I don't work on instinct here.

Not when I got a majority of a committee that I served on for eight years, saying, "Tom, we want 'em."

Then I'm gonna defer to the Republicans who unanimously voted him out of committee.

- You have had a lot to say about Pete Hegseth in the last several months.

You say he has driven experienced leaders from the Pentagon, damaged our alliances, and failed to manage the most powerful military in the world.

What does accepting responsibility require of you beyond saying you regret the vote?

Call him for his termination.

But you like to get things done.

So just calling for his termination isn't the kind of work you're used to doing behind the scenes.

Well, you know, I am, well, obviously, if I shared things that I'm doing behind the scenes, they wouldn't be behind the scenes anymore, would they?

So do you think you can get him out before you leave in January?

Don't know.

Got 89 or 88 days.

Who's counting?

I'm a project guy.

You always got to know how much time you have left before go live.

So is your project to get Pete Hegseth out of the Pentagon before you leave in January?

My project is to try and get the Department of Defense supported in a way that they need to be.

And Pete Hegseth, in my opinion, is an impediment to that objective.

That's a yes.

Yeah.

I would really appreciate you elaborating on the story you told in your book about those last 24 hours when you changed your vote from a no vote to a yes vote, because you explain and tell a story that had only received a line in any of the press reports previously.

You explain that the Vice President invited you down, that Dan Driscoll and Mike Waltz and the Vice President took you to the Situation Room.

Was that the first time you'd ever been in the Situation Room?

Yeah.

So they were pulling out the big guns.

Yeah.

So what were they trying to do?

Well, the timeline's very important.

Number one, on Thursday, I said, "Guys, if the vote were held today, just so you know, I'd probably be a no vote," which is what prompted J.D.

giving me a call and going down the Situation Room.

But it was a very respectful meeting.

I have never, and maybe some of it is because people know how I react, if you want to come at me, I've never had a cross-discussion with President Trump.

And this was not a cross-discussion in the Situation Room.

They were absolutely professional gentlemen.

But they wanted to use the weight of the office and the circumstances of the day to convince me to just go ahead and vote yes.

So then they call the president, who happens to be on Air Force One.

And he asks you how it's going.

And in your book, the tone changes.

When you respond to the president, you say, Mr.

President, I'm trying to get to yes, rather than saying no.

Well, no.

Again, that's why the detail is important.

When I spoke with the former sister-in-law and the attorney was on the line, something weird happened.

I'm on a video conference with them from my condo.

And we had a good discussion.

I said, "It will carry weight if you decide to follow through with the affidavit."

About two hours later, I get a call from a New York Times reporter saying, "I understand you're talking to them."

What clearly didn't come from me, and the only other person who was an earshot from me was my wife, and I'm pretty sure she didn't.

So you're saying they leaked it.

Well, I'm going, look, why do I get a call about a conversation I just had two hours, that put my antenna up.

What did you think of it?

Well, what I made of it is there was a potential political dimension to it, or maybe they were thinking they could use politics to pressure me and folks are, are press or attention to press, people should know it just never works with me.

So that raised my antenna.

And frankly, it raised the bar on the legitimacy of their motivations, which is why I ultimately went to those other interviews.

I've never heard you tell this story.

I've never told it.

You just broke something.

But that-- I'm not interested in breaking news.

I really just want to-- I want to understand.

It raised the suspicion.

People get mad at how stubborn I am on due diligence.

I didn't want to get surprised.

I don't like getting surprised.

I've never been surprised in a committee hearing.

It's because I complete my due diligence, and that raised my antenna.

Makes a ton of sense to me.

You also write in the book that the threats kept coming.

You don't say a lot about what the threats were.

There were a lot of people trying to prevent me from completing the due diligence.

I think that they were trying to kind of limit who I would talk to, which raised suspicion.

By whom?

Who was running that campaign, in your view?

I'm not going to tell you that.

Was it Pete Hegseth?

Well, I've already told you.

No, not Hegseth.

I don't think he was in the mix at all.

I think it was some people that supported him, and they were doing what the president or some advisor told them.

You weren't the only one to receive threats.

Yeah, and they weren't threats.

I mean, people... No, no, no, no, let's not underplay the threats.

Senator Joni Ernst and her staff were very seriously threatened.

Well, I think that's fair.

I'll let Joni speak for herself.

People don't threaten me because it always ends up the same way.

Not well for the person who does it.

And when I tell you there was not a direct threat, I am telling you there was not a direct threat.

You're saying not a direct violent threat against you?

Not even a, not even a indirect, "Why are you doing this?"

Well then why did you write "The Threats Kept Coming"?

Well, they were like veiled threats.

Probably I shouldn't have used, bad word choice.

Let's just put it that way.

I mean, this has gone through several rounds of editing, Senator.

They, uh, not really.

But, but, but you know, it was the threat.

It was the ads.

Keep in mind they were, they did a media by North Carolina.

That was a threat.

So political threats.

Yeah.

So I'm not talking about physical.

That's what I mean.

Political threats are, you know, a dime a dozen in this administration.

At the end of the day, there's a line in the book that I'd love to understand.

Just one.

You say, "My vote would be the one to sink him, and in the first weeks of a new administration, for a president I supported and for whom this meant so much, I just couldn't do it."

- Mm-hmm.

Standing up to Donald Trump was harder than overruling your own judgment.

No.

Making sure that the Democrats did not weave into a narrative that the transition, the wheels are falling off the bus before you already start it, was my thinking.

This wasn't about just Pete Hegseth.

This is one of some of the key cabinet positions.

So the Democrats were dying to come up with a narrative that the bus was-- the wheels were falling off the bus.

I mean, that, at the end of the day, I also don't work on gut.

- Hold on.

You say that.

But you are elected to apply your judgment.

And your judgment, as you write in the book, was very clear that Hagseth was not qualified for the job.

And your judgment ended up not prevailing over your vote.

My gut.

I have the entire membership of a committee I served on for eight years, gushing over this guy, saying they wanted him to be the head of an agency that they never see.

- Kept doing due diligence if you believe that.

- No, look, though, I was trying to spend the week to find evidence that would have changed their posture post-vote.

I wasn't going to be a loner.

I was unsuccessful in finding first-hand, corroborated account of Ms.

Hegseth's affidavit.

And again, one that was somewhat with an asterisk after that New York Times reporter called me on Sunday afternoon.

You write about Vice President Pence that, quote, "No one should underestimate the courage it took for Pence to complete his constitutional duty," you're referring to January 6th.

You admire the courage Pence demonstrated.

Is one of your regrets that you weren't able to demonstrate that courage?

That's an apple and an orange.

I mean, my God, we're talking about the first peaceful-- the first threat to a peaceful transition of power in 250 years in a cabinet-level position.

They're not even in the same league or ballpark.

You were the single senator to decide whether to entrust Pete Hegseth with the most powerful military in the world.

And you write extensively in the first chapter of the book about how you knew better.

Well, that my instincts were right.

And I regret that I maybe sometimes don't work on instinct.

You're talking about that one vote on a cabinet member.

And what you're saying is-- I'm thinking about the relationship with armed services, a future NDAA, other confirmations that are important to me.

I have to look at that full-- I don't expect you to, because you're not a US senator, and you don't have all that stuff on your plate.

But I appreciate you explaining that it is-- It goes far beyond that.

You're trying to be a team player.

Yeah, always have been.

In 1987, William F. Buckley Jr.

hosted a forum for Republican presidential candidates on the original Firing Line, and it included Alexander Haig, who had served as the White House Chief of Staff, the Secretary of State, and the NATO Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.

Take a look at what Haig said about loyalty.

To me, loyalty has always been having the courage to tell the man you work for what your conscience tells you he must hear, not what you think he wants to hear.

And that's been my approach to every president I've served.

You write that there are at least 30 of your Republican colleagues who privately expressed concerns over the president's decisions.

On one issue or another, yeah.

Decisions.

But to what extent do you agree with Haig's description of loyalty as being able to tell the truth?

I fully embrace it.

That's why I do what I do.

Yeah.

And I've told the president that.

Look, but you got to realize we're in an age now where a president can end your career in a primary.

So the game is rigged when it comes to primary elections if the president is against you in the world of digital targeting, 24-hour news cycle, social media.

And guess what?

There were primary threats in the Biden administration.

There were primary threats in the Obama administration.

The system rewards extremists.

And it's the amplifier and the sustainer of social media and 24-hour news coverage.

What I want are outcomes.

What I want is what the majority of the American people want.

And we can fool ourselves into thinking that we're becoming the Democratic Socialists of America or MAGA on steroids.

But those groups really have a ceiling of maybe half or 15-20% of the party basis.

The rest of us are like, "guys, act like adults."

Governments, we're going to continue to make the United States of America the exceptional nation it is.

They're the greatest threat to our American exceptionalism.

That's why we need organizations that are ruthless, that target, and that support people who are using common sense and they're producing, not performing.

We need to get the performers out of politics, as many as we can-- you won't get rid of all of them-- and reward producers.

You were recently asked how President Trump might respond to Republicans losing in the midterms, given what happened after the 2020 election, and you responded, "I think there's a risk.

I really do."

Mm-hmm.

What does the risk look like?

Well, I don't know.

I mean, look, if the Democrats get a majority in the House and they're methodical in their approach versus, "He's guilty," you know, "Have one person."

Ten minutes later, he's guilty, that's going to create all kinds of tumult.

If they lay out, even like impeachment, if the Democrats build a case, look, I think it was bad judgment.

The president increasing his net worth by a billion dollars in the crypto space over the last year, bad judgment, probably didn't break a law.

Now, whether or not they just viewed it as a business transaction and didn't think about the look at being the United States president, I think that's a fair argument.

But we'll see.

If they want to investigate, if the law was broken, people need to be held accountable.

But you don't think that it would be improper of them to investigate?

Not at all.

I don't think it's improper for them to ask questions about why Don Jr.

apparently had a liquidity problem and couldn't pay for his own wedding.

All those are legitimate questions.

I mean, look, if I were to excuse that, then what moral standing would I have when the next Democrat president does something that on a pattern basis is the same thing?

Senator Thom Tillis, thank you for joining me.

Thank you.

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