Sen. Thom Tillis is getting some things off his political chest.
The North Carolina Republican, who decided to oppose President Donald Trump’s massive policy bill last summer and not run for reelection this year, has stepped up his criticism of White House advisers and other Republicans whom he accuses of not serving Trump’s best interests.
On Sunday night, Tillis leaped out as the first Republican to bash the Justice Department’s investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell. He declared he won’t support any Fed nominees until the central bank’s long-standing independence is fully restored.
That came after Thursday’s significant symbolic victory in getting unanimous Senate support to display a plaque honoring the police who defended the Capitol during the 2021 insurrection, overriding the efforts of House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) to keep the plaque hidden.
And last Wednesday, Tillis delivered a more-than-1,500-word stem-winder on the Senate floor denouncing Trump’s advisers for egging him on with the idea that the U.S. military could take over Greenland.
“I am sick of stupid,” Tillis said.
Early Tuesday afternoon, facing questions about the fallout from the Powell investigation, Tillis said his problems are with the Trump advisers who entertain these positions, not the president himself.
“Who on earth believes that the president could possibly have the depth of expertise to make some of these detailed decisions that he’s making? So, of course, it’s his advisers,” Tillis told a group of reporters in an interview just off the Senate floor.
Hundreds of miles away touring a Ford plant, Trump got questions about Tillis’s criticism of subpoenas from the U.S. attorney for D.C. regarding Powell’s testimony last year about a Fed construction project.
His response was relatively cordial, but Trump spelled out his belief that Tillis isn’t running for reelection because he was out of step with the president.
“That’s why Thom’s not going to be a senator any longer, I guess. Look, I like Thom Tillis, he’s a nice guy. But he’s not going to be a senator any longer because of views like that,” Trump said in Michigan.
Tillis said he and the president have retained good personal relations despite these recent criticisms.
“I’ve never had a pitched conversation with President Trump. And obviously there have been a number of times when he’s not been happy with me. The president’s been a gentleman throughout every single discussion,” Tillis told reporters Tuesday.
Last summer, as the Senate ground through the massive bill on taxes and immigration, Tillis battled with Republican leaders over offsetting cuts to Medicaid. He voted against beginning debate in late June, prompting a barrage of criticism from Trump.
A day later, the senator announced he would retire at the end of this year.
Tillis rejected the idea that his recent critiques of the Trump White House come from a sense of political freedom to no longer worry about political threats from the president.
“I would encourage people to go back to President Trump’s first administration when I respectfully disagreed with that advice he was being given,” Tillis said Tuesday.
The biggest standoff back then came over Trump’s 2019 declaration of a national emergency along the southern border to divert military funds toward building a border wall without congressional approval.
Tillis penned a Washington Post op-ed opposing Trump’s actions, warning conservatives that it would set a precedent for future Democratic administrations to ignore Congress.
“I have grave concerns when our institution looks the other way at the expense of weakening Congress’s power,” he wrote in 2019.
A few weeks later he reversed course — amid some murmurs about a far-right primary challenge in 2020 — and voted to allow Trump’s actions. Tillis did so after the majority leader at the time, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), publicly said revisions would be made to the law setting parameters for declarations of national emergencies.
Nothing ever happened on that front, something Tillis blames on three unnamed lawmakers who blocked negotiations.
“What you aren’t aware of is three senators who totally screwed up the opportunity to get the president to convey more power back to the Congress. That blew up because senators over here were not disciplined enough,” he said, declining to elaborate.
Tillis, 65, narrowly won a second six-year term in 2020. For the next four years he served as a crucial bipartisan negotiator while the GOP was in the Senate minority during the Biden administration.
On topics including immigration and gun control, Tillis hit his stride as a bridge to reaching consensus on politically thorny issues, deploying the skills he previously used to become speaker of the North Carolina House after just four years.
With Republicans fully in charge of Congress and the White House after the 2024 elections, that skill set holds less value. Trump and Republican leaders have largely pursued a party-line agenda.
Tillis’s departure from the Senate race gave Democrats a lift in their long-shot bid to gain four seats and the majority in the midterm. Roy Cooper, the popular former governor, entered the race and has been raising record sums. Republicans have rallied around Michael Whatley, a Trump ally who chaired the Republican National Committee but hasn’t ever won elective office.
In the first two weeks of the new year, Tillis has made clear that he doesn’t intend to slink away into retirement.
On Jan. 6, the fifth anniversary of Trump supporters storming the Capitol to try to block the affirmation of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory, Tillis read stories about how Johnson was blocking the display of the plaque honoring police. Some questioned whether the speaker was trying to help Trump rewrite the history of that day.
Tillis laid some blame on liberal activists who in the summer of 2020 erupted in violence for fostering a negative environment toward police.
But he blamed the Jan. 6 rioters for their violence, including Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police as she tried to jump into a lobby just off the House floor. Trump has called her a martyr.
“Sadly, she lost her life, but she put herself in that situation, like everybody else that breached this building and destroyed this institution of democracy,” Tillis said.
He lashed out at Trump for granting clemency to 1,600 people who were charged with crimes related to the Capitol attack.
“We sent the message that if you come to this Capitol and you got the right president in office, he is going to let you get past things that not any one of us would get away with if we did it in our home state,” Tillis said.
And he got the Senate to pass legislation clearing up Johnson’s excuse for not displaying the plaque and demanding that it be displayed in the Senate until a permanent spot is found.
On the Fed, he stood by his Sunday statement that he will block any nominees to the board in the Senate Banking Committee until there’s resolution to the Powell investigation.
“I’m not considering anybody. I mean, I wouldn’t consider my mother for the post under the current conditions,” he told reporters Tuesday.
But the Greenland matter has set Tillis off in his most personal fury toward White House advisers.
“Some people around here call me cranky. I have a couple of buddies that call me cranky. Do you know what makes me cranky? Stupid,” Tillis said in his Jan. 7 speech.
He mocked Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff, for television appearances talking about invading the autonomous island that is part of the kingdom of Denmark.
“‘Hey, this would be cool,’” Tillis said on the Senate floor, pretending to be a Trump adviser. “‘Let’s take over Greenland. It will be like a big aircraft carrier.’ Well, that is stupid.”
By Tuesday, Tillis still ran hot on the topic, saying that Greenland is an ally that would respond better to negotiating than military threats.
“There’s just a smarter, more sustainable, more popular way of doing it. That’s the advice he didn’t get,” Tillis told reporters. “Instead, he got the sycophants lining up, saying, ‘That’s great, we’re going to take over a sovereign nation,’ which is silly on stilts.”
The post Thom Tillis wants you to know something: ‘I’m sick of stupid’ appeared first on Washington Post.
