Thom Tillis blew up at Stephen Miller over a bonkers rant declaring that the United States should own Greenland.
The North Carolina senator, 65, delivered a fiery speech on Wednesday, lashing out at Miller, 40, after the White House deputy chief of staff went on an impassioned sermon on CNN asserting that the U.S. should own the semi-autonomous territory of Denmark.
Tillis blasted the comments as “amateur,” “stupid,” and “nonsense.”
“It has been the formal position of the U.S. government since the beginning of this administration—frankly, going back into the previous Trump administration—that Greenland should be part of the United States,” Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday. “The president has been very clear about that.”
“The United States is the power of NATO,” he went on. “For the United States to secure the Arctic region, to protect and defend NATO and NATO interests, obviously, Greenland should be part of the United States.”
Tillis tore into Miller in an explosive eight-minute speech that torched the top Trump aide, who has long had the ear of the president.
“I’ve got a couple of buddies that call me cranky. You know what makes me cranky? Stupid,” he said. “What makes me cranky is when people don’t do their homework… Folks, amateur hour is over.”
Tillis reminded Miller that his opinion on Greenland, even if it’s shared by President Donald Trump, is not the official position of the U.S. government.
“We are a co-equal branch, and if that were to come to pass, there would be a vote on the floor to make it real, not the surreal sort of environment that some deputy chief of staff thinks was cute to say on TV,” Tillis said.
The Republican lawmaker said Miller would likely be hard-pressed to find support from “any credible general” on his Greenland takeover dreams, “because they understand that the NATO alliances is what has kept this world largely safe for over 75 years.”
“The flip side could be that Mr. Miller or somebody else said, ‘Hey, this will be cool. Let’s take over Greenland. It’ll be like a big aircraft carrier.’ Well, that’s stupid, too. And I’m sick of stupid,” he said.
Tillis ended his tirade by lamenting how Miller’s “nonsense” was distracting from “the good work” being done by Trump.
“The amateurs who said it was a good idea should lose their jobs,” he concluded.
The White House did not immediately return a request for comment on Wednesday. A day earlier, it said in a statement that Trump and his team were “discussing a range of options to pursue this important foreign policy goal, and of course, utilizing the U.S. military is always an option at the commander-in-chief’s disposal.”
Tillis joins a growing chorus of Republican senators who have broken with the Trump administration over the Greenland debate. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Rand Paul of Kentucky have similarly voiced concern over the power grab.
Last year, Tillis announced he was no longer seeking reelection after a high-profile clash with Trump over the president’s “big, beautiful” megabill, which the North Carolina senator opposed over healthcare cuts.
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