60 Minutes - Sen. Thom Tillis's Extended Interview

Episode Date: October 7, 2026

Retiring North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis speaks exclusively with 60 MINUTES about the political advisors he believes are responsible for undermining President Trump’s second term. In his only interview ahead of the release of his new book, "How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents,” Tillis joins correspondent Ross Douthat for a candid conversation about the ups and downs of his relationship with President Trump, the state of the Senate and the Republican Party, and how his upbringing shaped his political outlook. Graham Messick is the producer. Editor's note: This podcast is an extended version of the interview that was broadcast on 60 Minutes on Sunday, October 4th, 2026.

This fealty to a would-be king or a powerful president is not a good look in an election cycle where people are frustrated. Why anybody hesitates to say, look, I love the president. I voted for the big, beautiful bill. I'm okay with the CMS cuts, but we got to get this thing in Iran right. What's wrong with that? If they're thinking it, why don't they say it? And the ones who do, I think, will be rewarded at the ballot box, and the ones who don't, will probably have a lot more time with their family next year.

This week, on 60 Minutes, we interviewed Senator Tom Tillis. The two-term Republican from North Carolina has been walking a political tightrope throughout the Second Trump administration. He's voted with his party consistently and backed many of President Donald Trump's policy priorities. But he's also been a caustic critic of key Trump appointees and what he calls the president's WTF moments, all while insisting he's just trying to help the White House succeed. Now, on his way out the door, he's written a book called How to Lose Friends and antagonize. presidents, in which he blames what he calls sycophants in the president's inner circle for the administration's struggles. In a series of conversations on Capitol Hill, we spoke with Senator

Tillis about his relationship with President Trump, his fear of an increasingly imperial presidency, and what awaits the Republican Party in the midterms and 2028. This is an extended version of those interviews. So we're going to start where everything starts with childhood. You moved around a lot. I did. My dad was a draftsman, and he did boats, which took him from one port city to the other. So we were in Jacksonville, which obviously big port city, New Orleans. And then he moved up to Tennessee because it was a big dredge industry at the time, and

did that until his 40s, and then he moved out of that profession. I always describe it as the economic bubble. So we literally moved out of that trailer into that house that we owned. We sold that. Depending upon the circumstances, we were either in a house that we rent it. Sometimes we owned it. And when things got really spicy, we were in a trailer park. Do you think that your background, I don't know, does it make you different from your colleagues?

Well, you know what? I tell you what, it's why I probably react so quickly to this concept of we don't have an affordability problem. You always have an affordability problem. There's some segment of our society that always does. But denying it by definition means you don't recognize. a problem. If you don't recognize it, you're not solving it. Take me from the childhood on the bubble into your business career. Okay, fast forward. I get recruited by the Air Force to go serve, and I thought it was going to be my ticket to go to officer candidate training or go to school. Did that in

January of 78. And then in May, just before I graduated out of car accident, I got discharged, I saw an ad for a professional job in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and I took that job, and that was a year and a half there. I was recruited up to Boston at Wayne Laboratories. I moved about every two years. I was up in New England. Got me into high tech a few years later. I'm interviewing for a job with Pricewaterhouse six years later. I'm a partner one year later after being admitted to the partnership.

I got my four-year degree at almost age 37. So you're in North Carolina. You're working at Pricewaterhouse, and what takes you from there into running for office? I had a friend that by happenstance lived in Charlotte who had decided he was doing a lot of mountain biking. So he asked me if I wanted to go out. I got a deck that single track mountain biking. So got interested in mountain biking. But I looked around at these woods.

I said, man, this would make a great single track. So I researched. I knew it was government-owned. I didn't know who owned it. And then I went before the town board. And being a P.W. partner, I had a really polished PowerPoint because we always do. Afterwards, the chair of the Park and Rec Board said, yeah, that's a great presentation. If you volunteer on the board, we can probably get that done.

Well, I got on the board, and that's what started my legislative career. And I'm the second Republican Speaker in North Carolina since the Civil War. I decided to challenge a wonderful man who had been a long long. term minority whip to be whipped. When everybody thought after Obama was elected, Republicans were going to be in the badlands for many years. I felt like they were going to misread their so-called mandate and overreach. When nobody thought Republicans had a chance, we beat the Democrats for only the second time in over 100 years. And I believe that's why they had confidence in making me speaker. Give me one thing from your speakership there that you're proud of.

restitution for eugenics victims. Tell me more about that. I had no knowledge of it, but it dates back to the stanger movement and eugenics programs that were, you know, were being implemented in Europe, sort of the arrogance of thinking some people should procreate, others shouldn't. Well, that became a part of social services, not all, but many states did it, but they would use your ability to reproduce as a mechanization. for having you agree to be sterilized as a part of subsistence. And the more we looked into it. So you could get welfare if you agreed to be sterilized.

Yeah, and it was obviously tracking to probably some of the more problematic, more racist areas of the state. It was disproportionately African-American. I think it was around 1973 or 1974, the last four sterilization. So North Carolina was one of the worst states. When we became speaker, I tried to get a year. speaker, I tried to get it done. I was getting pushed back from my side. And I had one of my members say, you deserve to get this done. And we worked it into an appropriations bill and got restitution

first in the country. And I think only one other country at the time had actually done restitution in Northern Europe. So we allocated $10 million to provide some form of restitution to them, to the living victims. This wasn't, you know, you had people. saying this is reparations for slavery. I said, look, buddy, if we've got a living slave here, I want to give them reparations. These are living people who had a part of their body taken out by government. If that's not a conservative value, and if that's not the most profound form of taking, government taking, I don't know what is. By getting that done, that's the thing I'll remember. So now we're in 2014. So by that point, you're running for the Senate.

What made you want to be a senator? I didn't want a Democrat to win it. and I thought with the right candidate, we could win. And in fact, there were a few people, if they had run, I probably wouldn't. But in my judgment, the other six people that showed up, most of them were good people, one was a little crazy. But I didn't think that they understood that they were gonna be the number one targeted race,

that it was gonna be $100 million or more race, and we had to have somebody that could actually win. I wanted to be part of turning the Senate, it to a Republican majority, and that was the year we got it. So at this point, this is a few years after the peak of the Tea Party movement, but, you know, it's still sort of in the Tea Party era. What kind of conservative were you at that moment? The same conservative I am today. Pro-Second Amendment, pro-life, limited government, fiscal restraint. The only difference between me and a lot of people that call themselves true conservatives

is I got a long list of things that were ratified, and they don't. Who are your role models coming into the Senate? Who do you want to be like? As senators? As a senator? Yeah. Well, I named a dog after Mitch McConnell, so he's on the leader board.

When did you name your dog after Mitch McConnell? Let's see. Little Mitch is, I think, seven years old. Okay. So this was after you got to the Senate. Yeah. Yeah. So you're in the Senate.

It's 2014. The next year, it's the summer. Donald Trump comes down the escrow. and Trump Tower runs against the whole Republican establishment, the whole primary campaign, and wins. Trump wasn't a traditional conservative in 2015, 2016. So why did he win? The nomination. I believe he did a remarkable job of managing his brand and voicing some of the frustrations that the American people had. And I think that Obama, with the overreach of Obamacare, a number of other things.

It was just fertile ground for frustration. But you also have to understand this is coming up at the same time, social media, amplification of the message, sustaining the message, became a part of politics. So it's not like we're going to get out of a populist phase that started with Obama and then put on steroids by Trump, continued with Biden. It's here to stay. And I think that President Trump does a remarkable job. of trying to voice the frustrations of people,

and he got the votes. And I'm glad he did. I'm glad he won in 2016. I guess I'm just wondering, yes, Trump was running against Obama and the Obama legacy, but he was also in that primary running against Republican politics as usual. And I'm just sort of curious if,

while he was on his way to winning, or after he won, if there's a moment when, you know, a bunch of Republican senators are sitting around in D.C. and they're saying, What can we learn from this? Yeah, I think to a certain extent, but obviously he was mostly running against the Democrats. That's why he ran and the liberal policies that created a lot of problems for us. But he was also trying to awaken a part of a Republican base that had become disinterested after eight years under Obama.

And thank God he did. He awakened a part of the Republican Party that was necessary to win at the national level. describe that part? Well, some of them are good people and some of them are bad-shund crazy. What's the proportion? Look, I think at either party, I'll use the abbreviation, at either end of the spectrum, there's about 10 or 15 percent that have been exposed to guano. But the other people, you know, I really believe there's a big center, people that really want

government between the 35-yard lines. But by their very nature, they're not performative, they're not attacking people, they're not normally, they're going out. Hopefully we can commence them to vote if you have a reasonable candidate. The problem with politics right now are the polar extremes. And if you look at what they're prioritizing, they actually have a lot in common. And they have nothing in common with the governing middle between what I call the 35-yard lines of politics. So you're glad Trump won. Yeah. You're glad he beat Hillary.

You're glad he was president. And we did great stuff. You know, you've offered quite a few criticisms of the second Trump administration. And some of them have been put together in a book that I have right here. Can you tell me the title of this book? Yeah, it's a, you know, it's a little take on Del Carnegie, but it's how to lose friends and antagonize presidents. Any presidents in particular? Well, I mean, the more recent one, but I did a good job of antagonizing Biden and a little bit of

with Obama back in the day. Okay, but if you look closely, there isn't a picture of a president on the cover, but there is a picture of three separate Trump cabinet officials, Pete Heggseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kristy Noem. And then there's a small picture of White House Deputy Chief of Staff for policy, Stephen Miller. And we're gonna get into this,

but it's fair to say that you're not a big fan. of the people on the cover of this book. But this is Trump 2.0. Yeah. Talk about Trump 1.0. What was good about it? Well, you know, my gosh, we did what we're calling, you know, what we did with tax cuts to continue last year that was in the big, beautiful bill. The tax cuts were good stuff.

We did that. We did regulatory reform. We did a number of things who were just good, smart governance. So you did, you like the economic policies. What about foreign policy? I've always had some concerns with President Trump's foreign policy. We always, you need to treat the neighborhood of countries in a way that you always know who your family members are. And the family members are NATO members and Democratic nations who have a history of aligning when things get tough.

things get tough. The president, I want to give him extraordinary credit, particularly in this administration, but beginning in his first one, withholding NATO accountable. I firmly believe that some of the vulnerability that we're seeing that caused the Ukrainian invasion is because a $2 trillion shortfall in spending at the minimum 2% level for the first 20 years of this century. So NATO countries left $2 trillion on the sideline. If we had that capability and all the integration in industrial base that came with it, Putin probably would have made a different calculation. We'll never know.

We're seeing NATO transform. I was in Poland and Ukraine over the past couple of days, talking about other member states in NATO. I mean, they get it and they understand that they've got to sustain it. That's all because of Donald J. Trump. Certainly wasn't because of anything Biden did. So you've got first term. You've got good economic policies. you've got problematic but directionally effective foreign policy.

What about the Trump style? Yeah, well, that's it. See, most of it, it's not about the what. It's about the how. I mean, the way that the president, what, you've got president's style, okay? And he's going to be, I'm not going to change, he's not going to change. There's going to be social media posts.

The problem I have with some of the people on the front page of that book and a few others is that they're not looking around corners for him. Most of the issues that we're dealing with here have less to do with what he wanted to accomplish, but how he went about it. Border is a classic example. For the first time, immigration and the 4 million people

that Biden led in with open borders became a factor in the president's reelect. He had a wonderful... He had a wonderful opportunity to codify these policies that have effectively shut down the border. He didn't have had to have. have to do the overreach that Nolm and everybody got involved in. We could have done internal

enforcement and used the resources. I fully believe, you know, Obama deported a lot of people. We've got to deport people who are here that are illegally present. But they just went about it in a way that took a issue that helped us win the election that we were winning on, and people have forgotten the fact that the border is secure because of Donald J. Trump. So the first term, is it just that he's getting better advice? Yes, they were willing to tell the president what he needed to hear. And I'm glad they did because they're the ones who gave him a really, I think a really good four-year administration. So what changes this time? I should stipulate. There are a lot of good people working for him.

But I think you got these sycophants who are going to say, yes, boss, that's a great idea. Let's rename this. Let's build an arc. Let's do whatever we're doing. Maybe a golden cap on the ellipse. I don't know. but they're not being smart. But the reality is, if I am looking the president in the eye and telling him a bad idea is a good idea, I'm lying to the president of the United States, and I'll never do that.

One thing I thought was interesting in your book when you're talking about the change in Trump's second term, you talk about hubris, right, about this sense that it's our second term, we've won, we can do whatever the expletive deletive. that we want, right? But you also say, you think that after the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, there was almost a sense of divine mission or around. Talk about that a little bit. Well, I mean, it was extraordinary. And thank God he survived. But I do believe that maybe there was a sense that, well, if nothing else,

let's get rid of the divine mission and just say days are numbered, a sense that days are numbered, I'm going to charge through and get done everything I can do. You're in touch with your mortality. You say you think the president came to believe that he was kind of an equal partner with God. Well, look, man, I mean, you've seen the post. I mean, when you got a Dr. Jesus picture, you post it up. And then you start by doing like a divine thing. And then you move it to, I think I was a doctor.

I can't imagine doing something like that. Let's talk about his appointees and the people around him who you think are responsible for a difficult second term. Let's start with the Secretary of Defense, Pete Heggseth. You voted to confirm him. You call that your biggest regret. Regret. Is you just calling him to resign? Yeah, yeah.

I think he's incompetent. This sort of superhero Department of War machismo crap just doesn't impress me. In terms of policy, what he's actually doing at the department. What are you against? Well, it's the fits and starts, man. I mean, it's like no vaccines, whoopsie, we've got a lot of people sick vaccines. It's testosterone testing. Look, if a warfighter or personnel wants access to that, give it to them. Mandatory testosterone testing. I mean, my gosh, I've even talked with a lot of people in the field and they just chuckle at it. But I decided to roll it. rely on the Armed Services Committee for that, their assessment of whether or not he had the right

job, right skills to do the job. I used to be on it for eight years. I said, I'm going to defer to you all. When these allegations came out, though, in quite honest, I was looking for a secondhand corroborated account so that I could vote against them. I couldn't find it. And I don't work on instinct. I don't work on intuition. So in the absence of that, I decided to defer to the Senate vote. services committee vote, and I regret that. Do you hold him responsible for the struggle in the Iran war? Because you've said that you supported the initial decision to go to war. You know, I think that they got so caught up after the immense success of the first strike

that Hegset probably didn't listen to his best military advice and say, now we should probably move to a different posture. Do you think that he misled the president about what the military is capable of alone? Well, I think that he gave the president his view and what some of his political advisors around them thought rather than the best military advice of these extraordinary men and women with stars on their shoulders. I can't believe that this war and this plan was largely a result of the recommendations of the people that transcend administrations, you just can't believe it.

Peg Seth has removed a lot of people. He removes anybody who views as a threat. Is that the main thing? Are more confident than Helm, which is scary because, the vast majority of the people that advise him are far more competent than him. Do you think that's mostly about personality clashes, about people who stand up to him? I think it's an inherent insecurity of hexa. I love a room where my staff are smarter than me.

I cherish them when I'm in here, and I see them sharing knowledge that I don't possess and don't intend to. Have you talked to any of the people he's removed? Yeah. Did they tell you why they thought they were removed? They didn't feel like they were being listened to. It's like, shut up, nod when I propose something, sort of an environment. And we're at risk of others, I think, if we don't get this under control. Look, I don't have anything personal against Pete Heggseth.

This is not a personal thing with me. He is not the right man for the job. But what do you think the president is thinking? I mean, have you talked to him about this? The president I communicate. It's been about a week or so since we've last communicated. Have you communicated about Pete Hegseff recently? I have.

I have. And could you share any responses the president was offered? It's not substantially different than I've communicated publicly. I'm not going to, I don't know that the president's ever. Are his responses? I don't think he's ever directly responded. He's taking it in and he hasn't pushed back, but I don't think he's directly, if he did, I wouldn't tell you what he said. But I respect the president. I still feel like we have an odd relationship where I've clearly made him man. But it took years before he even made the first negative comment about me. But I react to anybody on this earth the same way. If you come at me with what I think is unfair or incorrect data, I'm going to come back after you. All right, let's go next to another face on your cover, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., head of the

Department of Health and Human Services. You also voted to confirm him. What has been wrong with his tenure? Well, first, I decided to confirm him because there are three Republican medical doctors on the Help Committee and on finance in total. And I had expressed to them that they're the subject matter experts here because they're on the committee and they also have the distinction of being medical doctors. And I said, guys, again, I know where I don't have subject matter expertise and I was relatively

new to finance. And so I said, I'm going to go, well, you're going to do. go. That's how ultimately decided to confirm them. But my gosh, vaccine policy, vaccine policy, vaccine policy for God's sake. I mean, that's another thing that infuriates me that brings us back to that trailer park. Okay, this man has never wanted for anything in his life. He's gotten whatever medical care he needs. He may have a distorted view of how accessible it is and how diligent the parents are and making sure you get all those immunizations to things at the right time. But when you're in a trailer park and you hear a health secretary say maybe you don't need vaccines

or instead of getting two combined when you're in there, you know, spread them out over time, that's great if you're taking a limo to your doctor's appointment. It's not great if you're taking a bus. It's likely they won't get that other vaccine and they'll get sicker. This is an example where I think they're out of touch with the most at risk strata of our population and standing by when we're having dramatic cuts and the NIH funding. It's irresponsible. And it's killing people.

Stephen Miller, president's advisor. You call him the architect of most of the dumbest proposals from the Trump White House and the worm tongue of the Trump administration, which for those who are not readers of J.R. Tolkien is a reference to a, a counselor, a bad, toxic counselor in those novels and in the movies. What are the dumb proposals that you have in mind? He was absolutely the architect behind the policy execution and Homeland Security. He was wanting to get the numbers up.

He wanted to have thousands. For deportations. Absolutely. We want thousands of people apprehend. it, just an irrational way about going about things. Stephen Miller should be saying, Mr. President, you and your first 90 days save the border. You shut it down. We have an orderly border for the first time in probably decades.

Let's codify it. Let's work with Congress to do it. Let's soften the edges of our image by maybe working on reasonable immigration reform, which the president supports. But instead, Miller never spends any time talking about codifying policy to harden it against the future Democrat that could open the government. border and he spends time alienating the Latino base and legally present people in the process and then has all the missteps in Minnesota and across the country.

This goes to show you just how incompetent this man is to not recognize the political window that we were operating with then. You know, I mean, the election, for one of the first times, immigration and the border, open border, was a meaningful issue to get out the vote. We should have implemented and codified the policies that were working in the first six months, had plenty of time to do it. And instead, he doesn't even think about it. There was never a serious proposal from the White House to talk to-

But this is a pattern for the second Trump administration. They like doing things through executive order. They don't like going through Congress. Yeah. And get ready because probably in the same way that the president's broken a record for rescinding executive orders, implementing his own, it's going to be beaten by a liberal president the next liberal president who comes in. They're going to use the Trump president as a reason for precedent as a reason for doing it.

There are people in the White House who you like. Yeah, a lot. More than the majority. The majority. Who do you like in the administration? Bissons, a great Treasury secretary. Rights doing fine in energy. Bergam's fine and interior.

I could go down the list. And for those of you that I didn't list, I'm giving you examples of the majority of the cabinet I'm okay with. You're very circumspect in the book about the vice president of the United States. What's your take on JD Vance? Well, JD's politics today bear no resemblance to the JD that campaigned to be a senator. Let's just be honest with ourselves. You know, he's supposed to be kind of a limited government, no wars kind of person. And he's excusing wars.

He's excusing cozy and up with Russia. We're far away from laissez-faire economic theory that we can possibly imagine. My gosh, he hadn't said a single negative word about the fact that we have equity stakes in 10 or more companies that we've essentially made state-owned enterprises by our share. Does anybody really believe that if the U.S. government has an equity stake in these companies, that any of the other board votes count? You don't think he's a conservative? I think he's a populist that has some conservative leanings,

but he's not going to let that stop him from, you know, looking the other way with the equity stakes that I've talked about and other big government policies. I mean, I don't think he said anything about promising people $5,000 checks and a trillion dollar, you know, a trillion dollar expenditure. Neither has any. I mean, if you're a member of the Trump cabinet, you're not going to, you know, Secretary Besson hasn't criticized it. There's a difference. There's a difference between the vice president and the rest of them. All the rest can be fired. I like J.D. Vance, again, I don't take any of this stuff personally. I'm giving him an assessment, an organizational. You need to understand, I fired my best friend. I literally did. And we managed to stay friends. But this is not personal to me. You're either the right person to be on the field or not. Why can't the good people who you like in the White House, and you just said it's a majority, you said you like a lot of people in the cabinet, why do they kept getting run over by the people on the cover of your book or the people? people you don't like. I think that there are some people in the in and around the president who have an outsized influence over them. And I do believe that the people that have the last word with the

president have the heaviest weight, particularly if there's some of his inner circle. My guess is there are some cabinet members who are saying president and you look around the corner and then they get into a room and either the president's dismissive and none of his inner circle pushes back or somebody who's in a personal circle or in his circle, say, we don't believe that and they move on. Who is that besides the people we've been talking about? I think Howard Lutnik's clearly one of it. I'm no fan of Howard Lutnik.

He apparently thinks that we have money genies that can create this trillion dollars and not use taxpayer expenses. So I need to figure out how that works because we need about 40 trillion of those to retire our debt. So he's one that I think has an outsized influence over the president. And again, with Lutnik, He's treating this like a business.

This is not a business. What don't they understand about the Senate and Congress? That we're a co-equal branch, and they're at our best when they treat us like a peer. But this runs both ways, right? That they're more likely to treat you as a co-equal branch if you act like a co-equal branch. Do you think the Republican Senate in Trump 2.0 has acted like a co-equal branch? I think in some cases, yes, in most cases no. And I would say the same thing for a Democrat-controlled.

Senate under Biden and Obama. Look, we always make the mistake when our guys in office of conveying power to the White House, and I've had a real problem with that, because it almost always comes back to bite you. You mentioned already the power over nominations is one of the key obvious powers the Senate has. Why didn't you use that power to try and block Robert Kennedy Jr. and Pete Hagezoff? And it was all timing. Look, all these were happening in the first quarter of the president's administration. And I think the president is entitled to have the people he wants in the office. So I got to strike that balance between my own idealized view of a nominee and what he wants. I don't want the story to be, you know, Republicans are beating themselves up. So on the margins,

I'm going to go with what they want, even if I have some misgivings, unless I can find something compelling and concrete that I consider disqualifying. And I could not find that in the timeframe that I had on Hegsef. You say in the book that at least 30 of your Republican colleagues in the Senate expressed reservations about many of the president's actions in private.

Why can't in cases like Hegeseth, those 30 turn into five votes against confirmation that gets you a different Secretary of Defense Okay, there are some that just really do not want to bear. They don't want to put their head out. They don't want to bear the way to the president. I get that. You're up for re-election.

He'll target you on a primary. And so, look, you know what all martyrs have in common? They're dead. There were probably a few instances where if we'd kind of rip the Band-Aid off early, then I think we'd had a lot better midterm environment than we're confronted with now. Hi, I'm Dr. Mary Claire Haver, a board certified OBGYN and menopause specialist. My new podcast, Unpaused, is the place for bold, unfiltered conversations about what it really takes for women to thrive in the second half of life. Every week, I sit down with medical experts, cultural icons, and powerhouse women to talk about what really matters.

New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen to and follow Unpaused with me, Dr. Mary Claire Haver, available now wherever you get your podcast. Describe the pressure that gets exerted on you or any of those 30 anonymous skeptical senators when they're thinking about casting a vote against a presidential nominee or any presidential policy. What form does that take? No, it can be intense with ads and calling over to the White House. You saw with, you've seen bus fools of House members that are far more susceptible than senator in any given cycle to primaries being bust over, you know, doing the Jedi mind trick on you will vote for the big, beautiful bill.

It's called whipping, okay? That's what we do. We whip a vote or an outcome, but they were intense, and a lot of people had a tough time with the pressure. Why didn't you want to run for re-election? I didn't want to run the second time. In fact, I decided not to, and I talked with a few people after I decided not to that convinced me that if I didn't, then we'd.

we'd probably lose the seat. They were right if you take a look at it. And I did not want to have that weight on me. But you could, if you do that every cycle, that's how you become 120 in the U.S. Senate. I can find other ways to probably contribute. It's time for somebody else to step up. And I'm not so arrogant as to think that with a state of 10 million people, that I'm the best possible option. There's plenty of people out there. They need to get out and take a dip in it and be patriotic. We also spoke to Senator Tillis in a Senate hearing room,

asking him about his public grillings of some of President Trump's officials, including former Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Christy Noem. What makes the difference between a really good grilling and just bloviating at someone? An outcome? You know, when I have a...

I don't take the oversight role lightly. I don't like abusing the power that we have at the dais with witnesses. And so when you hear me do that, it's not for viral. It's to shed light on a problem. We did that with Christy Knoem. The fact that you can't admit to a mistake, which looks like under investigation,

it's going to prove that Ms. Good and Mr. Petty probably should not have been shot in the face and in the back. I'm not very often that angry, but when I'm angry, I believe there's a reason behind it and people should listen. What were you thinking then? What had gone wrong with her tenure? I was thinking about the $200 million that the Department of Homeland Security was spending on an ad campaign with her riding a horse.

I was thinking about her calling people that were shot potentially domestic terrorists that's proven not to be true. Why do you think the president picked her? I think there are some people that are in the cabinet because, to use the president's term, they're right out of central casting. I think Noam and Hexeth are probably the poster children for men and women who should never have the authority. they've been granted. You got to watch Elon Musk come in and run the Department of Government Efficiency. Yeah. What did you make of Doge? I knew it was doomed from the beginning. And the reason for that, Elon Musk is brilliant. I'm a huge fan of Elon Musk. What he's done to advance rocket research and private sector, it's enormous. But just because you're a billionaire, or almost a trillionaire,

or just because you're successful in one field, doesn't mean that you know how to do that. You know to do enterprise transformation, how to drive efficiency. I don't know of a single dollar that's been booked as a result of Doge. How many times did we have like a reduction in force by email and then have to withdraw it and bring people back? Well, what happens there, are the really, really talented people

probably aren't gonna come back, or they're only gonna come back long enough to get the heck out of government? The Trump administration did end up raising tariffs on just about everybody. Were you in favor of that? No, I wrote a letter to my conference. conference the week after so-called Liberation Day and said this is going to end badly.

It was obvious to me. Look, number one, how on earth can you declare using emergency powers to impose a tariff, a 50 percent tariff on a country that has a trade surplus with the United States? That's what he did to Brazil. Even the tariff amounts themselves and the countries were nonsensical. It was another example of where Lutnik thought it was going to be found money he thought he was going to find a trillion dollars that he could then invest and maybe invest our way out of the debt, which conceptually I agree with. But there were a lot of kinks in that slinky that he did not anticipate. So they've created more uncertainty. People don't even know when they buy something how much it's really going to cost. Now, should they have tailored and used sanctions to go after bad actors? A hundred percent. China, India,

even some of our European allies, even in some cases, there's a valid reason for Canada. this sort of shock and awe and think that there wasn't going to be a counter and people kind of rethinking whether or not they should depend on the United States going forward like they have in the past. Those were the unintended consequences of a half-baked idea. And I lay that primarily at Howard Lutnik's feet. We're headed into an election year. Inflation is creeping back. Interest rates were just raised. We're in an escalating trade war with Canada. Gas prices are still elevated. Who's to blame for all this? Well, first, I don't think when Republicans are out campaigning

that they're not mindful of affordability problems. This is the situation that I have with the president, some of his advisors saying it's a hoax. The president needs to understand that not everybody grew up in the circumstances that he did. We need to show empathy to people who, when they see the president of the United States on TV saying the affordability thing,

is a hoax, and they're trying to figure out how they're going to pay for food, it's not a good look, and it could have electoral consequences. Well, speaking of the president, though, how much of this is just his foreign policy and the war in Iran, right? Like if you took away the Iran war, if the straight-of-war moves were fully open, you know, you'd still have affordability issues, but things would be a lot better, right? We would probably have more of the traditional headwarrant wins in a midterm. than the kind of headwinds that we're having that are almost 2010-like, in my opinion.

You supported the Iran intervention when it started. Would you have supported it if you'd known that it would still be going on as an open-ended conflict six months later? I'm not sure that I would have. We are forgetting how everybody, even the Democrats, were struggling to criticize the president for the exquisite capabilities that are men and women in uniform executed. to degrade Iran's nuclear capabilities. The problem is, I think people like Hegsseth thought that every engagement was gonna be that way.

And what we should have done shortly after that success, maybe being strategic with some of their strike capabilities, is immediately moved to some of the economic strategy that Secretary Bisson is moving on now. In my opinion, what we're doing now through financial measures should have been the second wave, probably starting some time, time in March or April. Speaking of difficult military campaigns, you just got back from Ukraine.

What's your assessment of that war right now? The Ukrainian people are doing an extraordinary job. Putin can be defeated there. He must be defeated there. There's no such thing as a win-win outcome in Ukraine. I respectfully disagree with Kushner on that characterization. Sanctions bills at the president's desk now. Putin's already planning on freezing Ukrainians to death. this winter. They're attacking the electric grid. They're trying to eliminate steam, which is distributed in places like Harkiv, this winter, to literally freeze civilians to death. That's the sort of terror that Putin's bringing to Ukraine. We need the sanctions to be implemented, and we need Putin to lose. Not a win-win, not a face-saving measure.

This is a battle between the free world and totalitarianism, and there's no room for a win-win in that scenario, in my estimation. Do you think the president's done enough? No. Frankly, I hate it, the deference that was paid to Putin in Alaska. I know that the president's a dealmaker. He wants to make things come to the table. That's great in a business world.

But we're talking about a murderer. Give me your big picture take on Trump and Putin. What does the president think about Russia and Ukraine, really? I don't know if I can get inside the president's head on this one. But if you've got a country that's now gone from being attacked to the largest, most powerful military in Europe, do you really want that to fall to Russia? And I think, I don't know if the president really understands just how profound that is. Or if anybody's really explained it to him that way.

But with defense guarantees and pushing Putin further back and denying him his vision of reestablishing the Russian Empire, it's the most enormous when creating an additional buffer between us and NATO countries for building an economic relationship with a reformed and emerging Ukraine, that that should be his legacy, not creating a win-win with one of the most vicious, murderous despots that's ever lived. Let's talk about a different national security threat, the fears people have about artificial intelligence. This is a new technology. Nobody understands where it's going. Do you think Congress is equipped to do something reasonable on AI? No. I mean, ultimately we need to act, but what we need to do is, I think, create a almost project warp speed that we did to develop a vaccine. We need a lot of

smart people in the room give Trump credit for that. We need a lot of people in the room from industry. Keep in mind, Ross, this is industry saying we need to be regulated. If you're the CEO of a company and you're asking to have a regulatory burden, that almost never happens. And you're doing it because you also think it's in the best interest of your company and your investors. Let's figure out at a level that all congressional members can understand what we should or should not do. I just think we need them all in the room, say, to what extent can you self-govern, and can we create a standard that says, if you can't certify you're doing this, you're an outlier, and we need to deal with you.

How much of that do you think can be handled by internal industry scrutiny versus some kind of government regulatory body? I think a fair amount, but there's still going to be some gaps that probably require congressional oversight. But I think we need to be very careful. The malign actors aren't going to stop. China's not going to adhere to any industry standards for child safety, quite the opposite. I think you're an early adopter. I mean, as senators go. Oh, I was, I've, I gained access to open AI within 48 hours of being available in the developer program. They didn't know who I was. And I wasn't a developer. I was trying to use the tools that existed at the time. And so,

yeah, I've invested in it for as long as it's been available to the general public. I use three different LLMs on any given day today. So what's your- So I consider myself still a neophyte in terms of the technology as capabilities. As do some of the founders, because they're going, holy cow, this thing can do that. They created it. I think we can get this under control. I've seen this movie before.

We just need cooler heads in the room. A lot of people have seen this movie. I'm told that you keep a potential killer robot on your property to mow your grass. I don't appreciate the characterization. I think he's kind of an electronic member of the family, and he's doing a great job on the pasture. Let's talk about some of the things that you've watched in the last couple of years of the second Trump administration

that have made you say, in your own words, WTF. We were filming with you yesterday when a reporter asked you about a story that Donald Trump Jr., not an administration official, but, you know, a member of the family, allowed a Russian oligarch to pay for part of his wedding celebration. Did that surprise you? I was disgusted by it. I mean, come on.

The dude is worth somewhere between $300 and $400 million. Maybe he has a liquidity problem. But while on earth, you thought it was a good idea to receive money to pay for a wedding that he could have easily paid for or maybe skip the frills that were funded by. this oligarch. I mean, you know, I grew up in an environment where you stayed away. You knew where the line was and you took a step back and you never navigated to gray. This is a gray area that I find very disturbing. And in some respects, almost Marie Antoinette-like in terms of the view that somebody would have who's struggling. Really? You got a Russian oligarch funding,

a wedding at some remote island, wherever it was. What do you think the oligarch? got out of it? I don't know. And we've seen a lot of this in this administration. Obviously there are versions before and Hunter Biden got a lot of attention in the last administration, but here you've got cases like Don Jr. and the Trump family. You've got people connected the family of Commerce Secretary Lutnik, not your favorite person in the world who seemed to be doing very well in this administration.

How bad is the corruption? I can't speak to corruption. I'm not an attorney and I don't have the facts before me, but I can tell you the appearances are disturbing. And this one is probably the one that objectively is the most disturbing, because everybody's admitted that it occurred, right? And now they're trying to justify it. I'd be writing a check back to that oligarch and apologizing for whoever allowed that to happen. And it may very well be, I don't know. It may very well be that Donald Trump Jr. was focused on a wedding and didn't even know it was accepted. But if he wasn't aware of it,

had bad advisors. The first thing he should have done is say, thank you, no thank you. I mean, how much money could it have been? Why did they do that? It's an unforced error. Got to some moments that you call your breaking points with the administration. And one of them was the Department of Justice, the moment when the Department of Justice seemed to be opening an investigation of the Chairman of the Federal Reserve for improper spending on renovations. Talk about that. Well, I had developed a relationship with J. Powell that dates back years since I've been on the banking committee. I was becoming really concerned with them trying to politicize the Fed and threaten its independence.

So I was aware of this investigation that was going on. And so I told my staff, let's be ready within minutes of this becoming public to make it very clear where I'm going to be on. Powell and his nomination and not allowing anybody to replace him. I really believed if the market thought that the Fed was going to be controlled by President Trump, that it was going to have dire consequences in the market. Most people I've spoken with agree with that. So we just move quickly to try and tie that off. And then you see what happened. We finally got to a point where Warsh is confirmed and the investigation has been withdrawn. So do you think that's a case study in how the Senate can use leverage?

successfully. That's 100%. And, you know, again, I hate it. I was already working behind the scenes to get it. I hate it when stuff gets the attention of the press. Some of the most fun I've had here are the things that we've gotten done, and y'all have never known about. And I was hoping that's what we were going to do with Powell.

But then somebody, Puro and people in little DOJ over in the D.C., decided to get too cute by half, and it required me to come out and be public about something that I had been private about. for months. Another breaking point was the plan or the proposal to pay out 1.776 billion dollars in taxpayer money to people who were, in the president's view, persecuted for their political beliefs or loyalty in the Biden administration. What was your objection to that fund? I came out when I first saw it, said it was stupid on stilts. The fund itself, I said it was a payout pot for punks because it was going to allow somebody who admitted to destroying the Capitol going into it,

causing harm to a Capitol police officer to possibly seek restitution after they admitted their guilt. I mean, and then the get out of jail free card for the administration, it was just the appearances were horrible. It made no sense. And somebody got cute by having 1.776 thinking it was somehow patriotic. There was not a single shred of patriotism demonstrated by the people who breached the capital. You ended up negotiating with then acting Attorney General Todd Blanche over this. What was the agreement you came to on the fund, the 1776 billion? To torture them. And to basically, you know, render it completely useless, not able, you know, like those zombies in the Walking Dead,

you thought you killed them, and all of a sudden they pop out of the closet. I didn't ever want to see it again. And he's satisfied in my mind that that would go away. And are you confident that once you're not in the Senate, it will stay dead? Or will it reanimate and shamble out of the woods? Don't see it. I don't see any scenario where it happens again. Okay.

So you're putting a lot of, but you're putting a lot of confidence then in him. No. I mean, there are structural reasons why even if he wanted to, and I don't think he would, he knows how damaging it would be to the president. Mechanically, it's not going to happen. I don't care what the Democrats say it's dead. We stuck a fork in it, which is exactly what I told them we had to do to get my vote. One other breaking point.

The last breaking point, maybe, for you, was the big, beautiful bill. And you called it the big beautiful blunder. What was wrong with it? It was another example where somebody in the White House or in the administration in this case, I think it was over in CMS or DHS, air-dropped language that was going to cut direct payments to health care providers that exceeded, at least in the state of North Carolina, what the Medicaid cuts were. I said I was fine with the Medicaid cuts. As a matter of fact, I thought they were necessary. But North Carolina was already ready for a cut because of the

House proposed measures, and I was okay with that. But then when it came to the Senate, somebody got too cute by half and said, let's add this, which almost doubled the overall cuts to states like North Carolina. It's not sustainable. Try to work with legislative leaders, try to work with congressional members, say, guys, I want to get to where the president wants to get or the administration, but this is not the way to do it. This is too much change too soon. It's going to be disruptive, and the ads are going to write themselves. How do you know when a cut is too steep? How do you assess that? The same way I did in business. I mean, you've got to program it out and say, how do I do this? What are we going to do? Home health is a classic example. The states are going to go to some of the more costly programs first

to try and get their budgets in balance. There's going to be a lot of unintended consequences. These things resonate with the American people. Those sorts of ads and those sorts of cuts are like, you know, that could be me. I wish I could have voted for the bill. Couldn't vote for it when I knew it was going to have an impact on North Carolina. I also knew it was going to have an impact on the politics this year. Both are true.

As much as Tillis trains his fire on Trump's advisors, he also acknowledges what he calls Trump's WTF moments, threatening to seize Greenland, casting himself as Jesus, or Easter Day musings about annihilating Iran. I think he said, open the fucking straight. Were you worried that we were going to start carpet bombing Iranian civilians? No. And I've told the president this before. I think you really need to understand the weight of your words

and how literally people take you. But how do you tell the difference between what people are supposed to take literally and what they aren't? You know, I'd like to think that most of the time the president would be surrounded with people who would finally say, Mr. President, if you do that, I'm walking out this door. There's a Russian expression, if only the czar knew, which means people don't want to blame the czar when bad things happen. They want to blame his advisors. But in this case, with Trump, it's on him, right? In the end, whoever he has around him, he's the czar. Truman famously said that the buck stops here.

It's a good line. I get that. But Truman had great advisors. And I believe that the president should rightfully look at some of the people that said, oh, you look so good. Oh, that speech was so great. Oh, Mr. President, that's a great idea. And then go behind and say, that's a bad idea.

Those people need to be held accountable. And I think that they will be in the pages of history. probably in future elections. This fealty to a would-be king or a powerful president is not a good look in an election cycle where people are frustrated. Why anybody hesitates to say, look, I love the president. I voted for the big, beautiful bill. I'm okay with the CMS cuts, but we got to get this thing in Iran right. What's wrong with that? If they're thinking it, why don't they say it? And the ones who do, I think we'll be rewarded at the ballot box, and the ones who don't, will probably have a lot more time with their family next year.

So you think the Republican Party is going to have a rough midterm? Yeah, we were going to, historically. I think we're going to have more, and we can remove some of this just by being straight with the American people. Look, the American electorate is very forgiving. If you apologize for a misstep, explain what you're going to do differently, you get votes back. But if you double down on something that's clearly not resonating with the voters, then you're going to get what you get. Do you think there's any way the Republicans hold your seat in North Carolina? Well, the numbers are against it.

But I tell you, the next couple of weeks will be a make or break, I think, in states like North Carolina. After a tough 2026, it'll be 2028. It'll be a presidential cycle. What does the battle over the future of your party look like then? You know, we're going to have this situation where the president's going to have a heavy influence on a primary and boy this is when we really have to speak frankly about what kind of profile we need to win a national election in 2028 and it probably isn't what the president is thinking right now is a go-to pick so we're going to have to have a serious discussion with that the end of the rnc

other republican organizations need to come down and take the president's advice but look more towards the Republican Party priorities and things that go beyond 2028. What would be wrong with the president's go-to-pick? Because I think it's one that works well, and red MAGA states won't work well for general election. The nation... Are we talking about the vice president, or are we talking hypothetically? Well, I don't know. I assume right now you had, you know, I guess the Texas, Trumpapalooza, whatever it was called, he was kind of introduced and I think endorsed by turning point, so it looks like things would lead that way. It's not necessarily a lock in terms

of the president's endorsement. But I don't think the president should handpick. The president is, by definition, going to be in retirement when the next person is sworn into office. The president should have a say, but this is not a decision that should be solely his. And my God, I'll tell you, if we have people looking at a nomination that he wants that we all know isn't the right one, then we better step up and defend this party. I'm not going to run for elected politics again, but I'm going to be involved in that process. And people making decisions that I think undermines our brand and undermines our chances for success will be in my crosshairs any way they can be politically. If this election goes the way I think it will, that we will

maintain a majority in the Senate, maybe net lose a seat or so, get some of these good members back, and we lose the House. That is a time for reflection, and that is a time for saying, clearly, if we lost and lost by whatever the numbers happen to be, we've learned from that. These are the mistakes we've made. This is what we're going to stop doing.

This is what we're going to start doing. We're going to start engaging Democrats. We're going to start pushing aside these partisan voices. We're going to be the adults in the room. And this is what we're going to continue to do. We're going to continue to cut your taxes. We're going to continue to cut your regulations. regulations. We're going to continue to do the good work that's been done under this administration.

One thing that happens when the president is unpopular with the country, but still popular in his own party, is that people try to criticize him by criticizing the people around him, by saying it's this person's fault, it's that person's fault, it's the advisor's fault, it's this group's fault. In the end, though, the president's bad approval ratings, a lot of the things that have gone wrong in his second administration, they're his fault, right? Look, you can't fire the president. That's not an option. The president is going to be the president until the end of 2028. The only thing that you can change, the only people you can fire are the people around him. Tillis often talks as if the administration just needs a dose of managerial efficiency.

I'm just going to hit play and let you watch. And maybe a little less flattery in cabinet meetings. You are fixing everything with your policies. You have changed America and created the Golden Age. Oh, wait a minute. I don't have enough drama meeting to go forward. So you've been in a lot of corporate board meetings. Do they ever sound like that?

No. The American people want honesty. I don't want sycophants around the president because it ultimately harms him. It may very well be that this is what the president needs to feel good about himself. But if that's true, the president needs to seek help and find confidence.

He's a successful man. He should feel comfortable in his own skin. I don't need people gushing over me to feel comfortable in my own skin. And I expect the president in the United States to have that swagger going into a room and get right to business. The American people want business.

They don't want cheerleaders. They want people on the field doing the work. We spoke with Tillis about the events of January 6, 2021. He told us he was so angry about what was happening that day that he considered staying back in the Senate chamber. On January 6, 2021, is it true you were the last senator out of the chamber? I was in the back of the chamber, and one of the vice president's presidential detail came back and said,

sir, we've really got to go. And we left. But part of the reason I was there was I was angry. Quite honestly, I wanted to greet them. and not in a hospitable way. Were you expecting serious trouble? Not at that level. I mean, we heard the noise, but at the time,

we thought it was from outside. But then it got louder and louder. And my chair was at the time, Centirole back of the chamber, and I could hear it more closely. I had no idea they were all over the place at that point. Do you think they were sincere, the protesters, in the sense of they thought they were patriots

saving the Republic? Some, but not many. I think many of them were just people. that are hateful, disrespectful of our democracy. There were some in there that were probably legitimately concerned and sincere, but I don't even believe it was a majority. I think some of them were just grifters

that look for a good cause they can make money off of. Look, this was the first time in the history of this country that we had not had a completely peaceful transfer of power on that day, and that was despicable. The people that led the charge, the people that assaulted police officers, that assaulted police officers, I wish they were still in prison

and serving a very long sentence. But they were there for the president. Yeah, I think so. I found it disgusting. So you have a president who in this account has effectively encouraged a mob to storm the Capitol. You had the chance to convict him in an impeachment trial and prevent him from being president of the United States again,

and you decided not to why? Because they cheapen the impeachment process by not having witnesses and going through the months that have historically gone through when we've done impeachment. It would transform it into a vote of no confidence. I thought that they were abusing it. The president, every person, even a serial killer, is entitled to due process.

The House did not give the president due process. If you had run a trial and spent like weeks, months litigating this, Well, first of all, would it have changed your vote? Would you have voted to convict in a scenario where they'd run the full trial and the facts were what they were? If they'd presented the evidence, I was open to it. Okay. Yeah. I read your book, and one of your themes was that senators need leverage.

This was a moment when you, as a Republican senator and your colleagues, you had all the leverage over him. You had the power to make sure he wasn't president again. Yeah, but what you're doing is a means justifies the end rationalization. So cheapening the impeachment process to prevent somebody from running in the future, I just don't buy it. Regardless of whether it would have shaped your vote, I think it's clear that with the passage of time, the Republican Party as a whole became uncomfortable with the whole subject of January 6th, but just specifically with the reality that people did bad things, the Capitol Police were assaulted, these kind of things.

What are members of Congress, what's the country owe the Capitol Police based on that day? Number one, respect. Number two, thanks. They got us out of the chamber. We didn't have a scratch. As a matter of fact, they got us into a conference room that, or a committee room that within two hours, we were being served a hot meal with two different choices. Thank them for doing that. Thank them for taking the heat. And when we passed, through the hallway that we came down to get to the Capitol, I saw people red and bleeding, police officers holding the line, and there were people probably not 75 yards away. We owe them a debt of gratitude,

and they owe us no apology. So there was a plan to install a plaque honoring that sacrifice, those efforts, everything the Capitol Police did. Why did it take so long to install it? I have to believe that people were afraid, on the House side to follow through on the legislation that had been passed because they thought there'd be repercussions from the president thanking the Capitol Police for protecting us

and recognizing January 6th is one of the most disgraceful days in U.S. history. Where did you install it? It's in the hallway that every president who gets inaugurated in the future walks through before they go out to the West Front. And I think that that is an absolutely appropriate place for it to be to remind every single one of them to never repeat that day again. We're about to have a midterm election. Do you have any concerns about how this same president who you've been condemning for January 6th will react if Republicans have a bad night in the midter? I think there's a risk. I really do.

It would be another political, unforced error if we do that. Tillis showed us the plaque honoring those who protected the Capitol on January 6th. While watching the sunset over Washington from the Capitol Terrace, he offered a warning about the rise of the imperial presidency. You talk a lot in your book about the risks of authoritarianism. What are you worried about? The executive branch, with its outsized influence, threatening people in primaries, basically degrading their independence or eliminating it altogether,

all together. Then we become a one institution country, which is exactly what we fought a revolutionary war over. I mean, we will have a sort of dictator king if we're not careful. And we have to fight for this institution. I'm a, I don't work for the president of the United States. I work for the American people, the voters in North Carolina, and I'm a steward of this institution. And I think our members need to take that job very seriously. We're not a sounding board. We're not a manufacturing facility. We're a board of directors for this democracy and we need to assert that at every chance we get. It seems like there's a step change where presidents just ignore Congress or don't even try and get things past. Oh, I agree. And all we've seen are the last four administrations is a constant

escalation. I want checks and balances. I want all three branches to have their individual role and continue to check power as they have for 250 years. And I think because we've been such a successful democracy for so long, it's hard for the American people to understand how quickly we could lose it all. Paramount Plus is your streaming home for another unbelievable season of the NFL on CBS. And here he goes. Every Sunday. Touchtown!

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