Last week, Politico published a pair of text messages that Senator Thom Tillis says he sent to Donald Trump earlier this year. They were a preview of his new book How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents, and they were plainly meant to introduce the country to a tough guy.
“If you had ever threatened me directly with a primary,” Tillis wrote to the president, “I would have immediately told you to f--- yourself, and I would have announced my retirement immediately. Save those threats and head games for cowards and fools.”
It’s a great line right up until the second half. What Tillis wants you to picture him doing to a president who dared to threaten him is…announcing his retirement.
And that’s exactly what happened. In June of last year, after Tillis voted against moving forward on Trump’s big budget bill, Trump said he was considering backing a primary challenger against him. The very next day, Tillis announced he wouldn’t run again.
While this isn’t exactly the same sort of rank capitulation that was seen from most of the GOP, it isn’t standing up to the president either. At best it looks like an angry child knocking over their toys and storming out of the room.
And now, with his term almost over, Tillis is back with a book tour, asking to be remembered as the man who stood his ground.
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The Book Tour
The book is called How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents, and it came out this week. On CNN Tuesday night, Kaitlan Collins read some of its greatest hits back to him.
Pete Hegseth is the biggest regret of his career.
Kristi Noem is “a dog murderer.”
Howard Lutnick is “nuttier than squirrel s---.”
Tillis didn’t flinch. “I stand by all that,” he said. “What else you got?”
Elsewhere on the tour, he said he hopes Hegseth gets fired. He also said something I happen to agree with completely: “When you tell the president he’s got a great idea, when in your heart of hearts you know it’s not, then you’re lying to the president.”
Despite the silliness of the book tour, Tillis was never a pure rubber stamp. He sank Ed Martin’s nomination to be the top federal prosecutor in Washington. He was one of only two Republican senators to vote against advancing Trump’s budget bill over its cuts to Medicaid. And he seems to know exactly what people will say about his timing. In the book, he acknowledges that some readers will conclude he only found his courage after he decided to retire.
They will, and they’ll be right.
The Deciding Votes
In January of last year, Pete Hegseth was confirmed as secretary of defense by the narrowest margin possible, a tie broken by the vice president. Three Republicans voted no. Thom Tillis voted yes.
One more no, and Hegseth never runs the Pentagon.
That might be forgivable as a single mistake, made early, before anyone knew how it would turn out. But then came August.
While this book was being written and edited, Tillis voted to confirm Todd Blanche, the president’s former personal defense lawyer, as attorney general of the United States. The final vote was 50 to 49. Once again, it was a confirmation that couldn’t have happened without him.
Tillis admits he knew better. In the book, according to Ana Navarro, who confronted him on The View, Tillis objects to the bogus investigation Blanche reopened into James Comey. Before the vote, survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse urged him to vote no, saying Blanche had shown no remorse for the release of materials that exposed their identities. He voted yes anyway.
When Navarro pressed him on it, his defense was remarkable. “I have no doubt in my mind that Todd Blanche is the most qualified person, as his former defense counsel, to try to give the president honest upward feedback,” he said.
In other words, Blanche’s top qualification for running the Justice Department is having been the president’s personal lawyer. The irony of saying that on national television while promoting a book about the dangers of sycophants seems to be lost on Tillis.
The Annual Review
On CNN, Tillis explained his critique of the cabinet like this: “The point is we hired them, we made a decision to put them in there. I’m giving them their annual review. They didn’t pass, you cycle them out.”
Tillis indeed hired them with his own votes, when he could have stopped them. If anyone’s annual review is overdue, it’s his.
There’s a reason Tillis chose the title, How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents. And on that count, I suspect the book will deliver. Conservative outlets are already calling his tour a meltdown. And those of us who’ve spent the last decade actually standing up to Trump aren’t going to throw him a parade for arriving after the fight. There’s no friendlier audience waiting for him on the other side of this.
What makes it so sad is how little it would have taken. Thom Tillis didn’t need a memoir to stand up to Donald Trump. He needed just needed to use his vote when it mattered.
No book tour can rewrite that.
— Adam
Amen! He and Cassidy and Susan Collins and all those who know better should be ashamed of themselves for voting in the worst , least qualified cabinet ever. And, having voted them in, all bad decisions, double dealing, cruel policies, and revenge prosecutions that resulted.
I blame him personally, and others just like him, for where we are today. I hope his book tour crashes and burns.