Sen. Thom Tillis on Losing Friends, Antagonizing Trump, and the GOP’s Future

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0:28Thom Tillis: From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome to a special edition of Potomac Watch. I'm Kyle Peterson with The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board, and we're joined today by Senator Tom Tillis, three months from his political retirement, letting his hair down a little bit in a new book, How to Lose Friends and antagonize presidents. Thank you for being here, Senator. As far as books by politicians go, this one is on the lively side. It includes a few contents of messages between you and President Trump, as well as details - From May to Trump. As well as details of private meetings.

1:07Let's start with one of those. You call voting for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth your greatest regret of your career. And you talk about the White House pressure to get you over to yes, including a high-pressure meeting in the Situation Room. I wonder if you could just give us that scene.

1:23Thom Tillis: Yeah, I describe in the book it's exactly the way the Situation Room looks on TV. I'm assuming it's supposed to be a weighty sort of setup. J.D. was at the end of the table, the vice president. Waltz was across the table, and Driscoll was to my left. The Army Secretary. The Army Secretary, yeah. And I'm not really phased by those sorts of things. I've been in the Oval Office. It doesn't impress me any more than, you know, being in this office. It's just a place where you do work. So I think they were trying to use the gravity of it. But at the end of the day, I was trying to get to the truth. The whole reason, and I talk about it a bit in the book, is I gave them a courtesy saying, look, I'm trying to get to yes, but if the election were held tonight, I'd be a no, which is what prompted the meeting.

2:08Thom Tillis: What I wasn't able to do in the remaining 24 hours is find a second, an eyewitness corroborated account of the allegations. and I wasn't going to move forward on gut. Now, in retrospect, I realized my gut was right, but I had to defer to the Senate Armed Services Committee. But give us a sense of what kinds of things that they were saying to you in order to convince you that this was a moment, a momentous point, a momentous vote for the Senate. Well, number one, there was not a single threat, up to and including the discussion I had with the president when the situation room didn't work out. Walt started with the threat matrix, talking about threats all over the world.

2:44Thom Tillis: And I just, when he got finished with it, I just said, well, what if Pete dies tonight? Then do we have a backup plan? Is he literally the only person that can go onto the field and match up against these problems? That's how I reacted to the first salvo. And then Dan tried to add something. And then JD tried to do his part. But I don't operate that way. I don't operate under pressure. I don't do people favors. None of these people are my friends or my colleagues. And hopefully someday out of the Senate, some of them can become friends. But I keep it at a professional level there. And I wasn't there to do any personal favors.

3:19Thom Tillis: I just wanted to do my job and complete my due diligence. You also talk a little bit about your interview, your Senate interview with then Judge Brett Kavanaugh, now Justice Brett Kavanaugh. What's the story there? Well, I try to lighten things up. And, you know, everybody was hammering him over a comment that he made about liking beer. So when he came into my office, I just thought I'd have some fun. I got the staff to get me a Bud Light. That was apparently his favorite beer. So I had it next to the chair that I was meeting with. I said, I know all this has been stressful, Brad. And I was just wondering before we get started, if you need a beer.

3:52Thom Tillis: He laughed. He didn't drink it. I think he did take it with him though. So I don't know if it was as a souvenir or maybe later on that evening, but I try to lighten things up to get people to let down their guard so that we can have a more candid discussion. Did that with Kennedy and others as well. How did you write this book? The acknowledgments suggest maybe you worked with a writer, but it began as a cloud of notes and letters to myself. I do. I have, you know, since my time as a partner in Pricewaterhouse, sometimes I do like after actions. It's for nobody but me. And actually with the advent of AI, since about December 2nd or 1st or 2nd, four years ago, I've been using AI daily just to talk and work things out.

4:34Thom Tillis: So when we decided to do the, they call it a crash project. So it was 90 days from start to finish. And I had a lot of materials, writings, things internal, nothing from anyone else. They were all my original work. And then Sean McGowan did a great job of kind of gluing things together. We had a couple of interviews and went back and forth on several iterations. It was a lot of fun. I've never written a book, never even thought about writing a book before. And it was a lot of fun. Well, one of the reasons I thought to ask that question is I didn't think that a ghostwriter would submit a manuscript with quite as many curse words in it as are in this book.

5:08Thom Tillis: Yeah, no, that's authentically me. One of my brothers read the book and he said, I'm excited. I'm nervous. I thought it was a good book. Do you know there are 27 f***s and 40 f***s? I said, 200 some odd pages. That sounds about right to me. But apparently even HarperCollins took some of it out. Look, I felt like it was inauthentic to write a book that wasn't in my tongue. And the fact of the matter is I use profanity. The president uses profanity. In fact, apparently now even evangelicals don't have a problem with it. So I felt even more comfortable with writing it in a way that if you were having a six-hour conversation with me, that's pretty much how it would go.

5:43On a similar sort of vein, you level some pretty personal attacks on members of the cabinet. So calling Kristi Noem a, quote, psychopathic dog-murdering secretary of Homeland Security, saying Tulsi Gabbard won't be challenging anyone for the president of her local Mensa chapter. Pete Hegseth comes in for worse. One reaction that readers on the right might have is Tillis is bitter about the way things are ending.

6:09Thom Tillis: You know, I am bitter about the damage to the Republican brand. But keep in mind, I was an active Republican before a lot of these people. I led the effort, the second Republican Speaker of the House since the Civil War. I have worked very hard to make Republicans and conservative ideology relevant and winnable in elections. And these people are taking it in the other direction. And when you challenge our brand, when you challenge my party, then I'm going to come after you. Hang tight. We'll be right back in a moment. If you're an RIA, Schwab Advisor Services is the Watson to your homes. Smart, dependable, always has your back.

6:46With all the wealth services, technology and support your firm needs, the difference is so obvious. It's Schwabius. Follow the clues at schwabius.com. This is Matthew Hennessy, the editor of Free Expression. I want to personally invite you to come check out what we're doing. Signing up for the newsletter couldn't be easier. Just go to our homepage. Directly below the Wall Street Journal logo, you'll find the magic words. Free Expression, wedged between opinion and arts. There's an option to sign up for the newsletter right at the top of our section. Just hit that button and you'll start getting the world's hardest working newsletter delivered directly to your inbox Monday through Friday.

7:27If you aren't a journal subscriber, the newsletter is free, but we are going to need your email address. There's a lot of fun stuff in the newsletter that you can only read in the newsletter, and I don't want you to miss any of it. Sign up for free expression today. We'll see you in your inbox. welcome back you also write that many of your republican colleagues in the senate privately agree with some of these criticisms of the trump administration you say at least 30 by my count express reservations to put it mildly about many of the president's actions in private then when reporters showed up with their cameras and their microphones they have nothing but nice things to say and you want to name any names here i mean you've already keep in mind it's also transactional

8:10Thom Tillis: And what I've tried to explain to everybody, I know Democrats would love for people just to fall on their sword. So what I was referring to is any one of these things that were problematic for members, they'd come up and say, yeah, I agree. Now, if they're in cycle, I've told them all, you shouldn't say a word. You know, because I think I say in the book, the one thing all martyrs have in common is they're dead. And I want Republicans to get elected. I'm working hard to make sure Republicans keep the Senate majority. But I just feel like there were a lot of members who agreed, like the Powell affair was a classic example, trying to maintain the independence of the Fed.

8:46Thom Tillis: But they weren't in a position either because they wanted – I was able to do that because of my unique role in that committee of jurisdiction. And so they were agreeing. And I think in the right circumstances, maybe some of them would step up. Others won't. But no, I don't criticize them for it. What we missed the opportunity last year, about a week after Liberation Day, one of the things that are published in the book was an excerpt from the letter I sent to Congress. I said, guys, if this is an indication of the trajectory of this administration, we're going to be in trouble next year. I was telling them that in April of 2009, based on that one Liberation Day, which was kind of a liberation half day, because I don't think that some of the tariffs stayed in place for 24 hours.

9:28Thom Tillis: That was just a misstep. It was an indication that they weren't going to consult with Congress. And if they don't consult with Congress, we're not going to have our act together. And that exposes us to what we now know are some headwinds in this election cycle. Is there a similar dynamic in the Republican conference on the filibuster? You've been a defender of the filibuster. You note that some of the loudest voices calling to end the filibuster now to pass the Save America Act were recently defenders of the filibuster. If push came to shove, how many no votes on ending the filibuster are there really in the Republican conference, do you think?

10:04Thom Tillis: I absolutely believe there are probably fewer than 15 members that really want to nuke the filibuster. I really do believe that. Because if you do nothing else, Mike Lee, look at how I've used the leverage that only exists in a filibustered Senate. You know, if you nuke the filibuster, the organizing resolution is a simple majority. Mike Lee, coming from a rural state, should understand more than anybody that he's transferring power to the most populous states and losing power by supporting nuking the filibuster. That's what's so frustrating to me when he's flipped. I mean, Mike Lee was a consistent, as I said in the book, bookish conservative.

10:47Thom Tillis: He was maddeningly consistent, but he was ideologically consistent. Now he's all over the board. He's set aside federalism. He's set aside managing the rights of the minority. He's just, he's become, like I said in the book, he's become that character in Black Mirror, Downfall episode, where he's just getting the endorphins from all the attention he's getting on social media and he's lost his ideological mooring as a result. How about on the Democratic side of the aisle, the argument on the right for ending the filibuster sometimes comes down to, if we don't do it now, Chuck Schumer is gonna do it later.

11:19Do you have members on the Democratic side who say, listen, you know, don't quite buy that?

11:24Thom Tillis: I think that the vote where you had Manchin and Sinema saved the Senate, that there were others. They're sort of like some of my colleagues who, if they'd had to, they would have voted for it, but they didn't have to because Sinema and Manchin did. And I hold out the belief that there are enough of them. But look, the rationalization that we might as well go ahead and destroy this institution because they're going to is as laughable as the expression that you just gave me. What about a similar question on the Supreme Court? Are there really 48 Democratic senators who want 13 Supreme Court justices?

11:57Or are there some that pull you aside and say, you know, you understand the political situation we're in, but...

12:01Thom Tillis: Same thing. I really feel like right now, unless there is a point in time when the Article 2 branch could become so powerful that it will overwhelm the Article 1 branch. That is why I'm speaking out now saying, guys, we've got to take care of this institution, not just so that we senators can enjoy the institution. It is foundational to the success of this country. And no one election, no one Republican election is more important than the integrity and the longevity of the institution as it exists today. It's what makes us different. It is absolutely, as a business person, I will tell you, we nuke the filibuster.

12:40Thom Tillis: We become a large coalition government with all the uncertainty that coalition governments in Europe have today. And we'll suffer the same consequence in terms of future foreign direct investment. It won't happen overnight, but it will happen over time. You mentioned your use of leverage to get the Trump administration to drop this criminal investigation into former Fed chair Jerome Powell. That story has largely played out in public. You're holding up the confirmation of his successor, Kevin Warsh, until that happened. But you also write in the book about your continuing efforts to protect Powell.

13:15Talk Talk a little bit about that. And once you leave office, do you worry that this criminal investigation is maybe going

13:22Thom Tillis: to be resurrected? No. I mean, my goodness, Horowitz is one of the best IGs that we have in the whole of government. He was under a microscope. If there was even a coin toss on criminal activity, he would have made a criminal referral and let the prosecutors work it out. He didn't. What he found is exactly what I thought. Dumb, but not criminal. Let me give you another example. Reflecting pool. Dumb, probably not criminal. Let me give you another one. Airfake One, dumb, but probably not criminal. Let's go to the Eastern Wing. So the point is we should be using GSA more. We should have more oversight over the Fed, but it was not criminal.

14:00Thom Tillis: Let it go. The only thing that this whole investigation has caused is Jerome Powell to decide to stay there long beyond the time he wanted to. He was on a path to leave in May coincident with the installation of Warsh at the end of his term. And all of this impatience has actually led to about a year extension, minimally, of Jay's term. Just give it up. Go on to other more important things. Don't be petty. And he will move on. But if you continue to threaten him, he would do what any reasonable person would do, stay there until you can keep your neighbor cleared. Just to fill in maybe a blank for listeners here, Horowitz, you mentioned, This is the inspector general of the Federal Reserve last week, released a lengthy report on his investigation finding Fed mismanagement of this building project, but nothing close to criminal, he said.

14:49But that's interesting because in the book, which I assume was written some months ago, you do seem concerned that maybe this investigation, this criminal probe of Powell might come back. Do I hear you saying that you think that the Horowitz IG report is definitive enough?

15:06Thom Tillis: Yeah, I believe that the criminal pursuit is done. I mean, even boneheads like Pulte should be able to figure that out by now. And certainly, I think the attorney general recognizes that. It'd be a waste of time. At this point, if they try to do it based on the information from the report, it would be worse even than the 8647 investigation. Now there's some talk of, well, maybe we should terminate for cause. Okay, well, how'd that work out for you, Pulte, with the Cook termination? What you're going to end up doing is extending Jay Powell until 2028 without just giving up. You were wrong. You lost.

15:43Thom Tillis: Now let's win by getting one more Fed board seat. We still have time. If we can say that this investigation is completely and fully settled and we don't have anybody backbiting, my guess is Jay will decide to leave. But if not, then they can roll the dice and see what kind of Congress they have next year to fill the seat. What about the president's 1776 slush fund? You use some leverage to good effect there when Attorney General Todd Blanche was up for nomination. One of the things that he ended up doing was rescinding his original order creating the fund. Some critics of that have suggested that there's nothing legally enforceable about that promise, that Blanche could always agree to bring the fund back now that he's been confirmed.

16:28So what do you make of that? And what was it that satisfied you about what Blanche said and did that he earned your vote?

16:34Thom Tillis: I think what he said and what he did, he did a number of other things that satisfied me. He was right for the job. He was the president's defense attorney. If anybody is going to speak candidly to the president, it's somebody who has in the context of previously being his defense attorney. But I feel like every step of the way, Todd was absolutely responsible for getting us to a deescalated position and getting me to a point to where I could support Warsh. And I'm glad I did. He's a great guy. So I feel like he's the right person at the right time to try and advise this president on the meets and bounds of what they should be pursuing in terms of him.

17:13Thom Tillis: Look, their batting average is not good. OK, what I haven't seen a lot of reporting on is the number of these things that were high profile that have gone away. I mean, they're swinging for the fences and they're striking out. Why don't you focus on prosecutions that can actually bear fruit? There are plenty of opportunities for that. But these things that look like they're one-offsmanship, and the thing with Jay Powell, if somebody thought that they were going to litigate him to death and ruin him economically, they need to know taxpayer dollars are being spent because they are represented by legal counsel from the Fed.

17:43Thom Tillis: Let's get out of that, guys. Get over it. Was the alternative part of the Blanche calculation as well in that he was already the acting attorney general and could stay the acting attorney general? I mean, is that part of the difficulty in your chair sometimes is even if you voted no, the alternative is Todd Blanche? Yeah. And besides that, I actually there's something about Blanche that makes me feel comfortable with him being in that role. And in some respects, if I think he had been the original attorney general, you know, the first nominee I mentioned in the book was Matt Gaetz. And Matt and I ended up developing a fairly good relationship, but he was never going to get confirmed by Congress.

18:20Thom Tillis: That one I was able to do quietly, along with the help of a couple of other members. But, you know, honestly, I think Todd's the sort of person that he needs to get in a room. Everybody knows that he has a unique relationship with the president because of his past with him. And I feel like we need to have that person in the room. If anybody is going to speak truth to the president outside of me, it's going to be Todd Blanche. Hang tight. We'll be right back after one more break. If you're an RIA, Schwab Advisor Services is the Watson to your homes. Smart, dependable, always has your back. With all the wealth services, technology, and support your firm needs, the difference is so obvious, it's Schwab-vious.

18:55Follow the clues at schwab-vious.com. Don't forget, you can reach the latest episode of Potomac Watch anytime. Just ask your smart speaker. Play the Opinion Potomac Watch podcast.

19:10Thom Tillis: From the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal, this is Potomac Watch. Welcome back. You write in the book about being a longtime Republican, wanting to save your party from itself. How do you size up the 2028 debate? In the book, you do not seem unduly impressed by Vice President J.D. Vance. You look, you got to look at the reality of the election outcomes. 29 days from now, we're going to have a very difficult time keeping the House. So let's just assume, statistically speaking, it is lost. The Republicans' fortunes in 2028 are all going to be dependent upon the president's reaction to that and who he wants to be the presidential nominee.

19:50Thom Tillis: He is going to carry that weight into the nominations process. But if he has the approval rating that he has now, then how on earth do we think that that's going to be the stuff that wins the national election. And so I'm not really sure that, you know, I've got my own thoughts about who may actually step up and run. But in 2028, if we don't change course and figure out a way to bridge the gap and address some of the economic issues, the other things that are driving voters in this cycle, I think it's going to be a horrible year for a presidential candidate. And maybe some of the hopefuls will just wait until 2032, where it'll likely be better.

20:25Thom Tillis: The whole premise of the book. Since Obama, every election, the other party, when they win, they think they have a mandate. All they've gotten is an opportunity to govern. And every time that you overreach, you get kicked out. Well, let me press you then on a couple of other names that are floated. I mean, one is Marco Rubio, of course, Secretary of State. It seems like you're a little friendly with him in the book. And then the other making maybe tiptoeing at this point toward a presidential campaign in 2028 is Ted Cruz. I mean, all of these men, you know, personally served with in the Senate.

20:58How do you fit them into a world where President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, but maybe able to offer a different vision or have a little bit of distance if these elections go as badly as you think?

21:10Thom Tillis: It's virtually impossible for me to see. And Marco is a brilliant guy, hysterically funny, encyclopedic knowledge of sports and has a wonderful relationship. I mean, the guy got unanimous vote for his current position. I don't see how even with his political skills, how he could do what he would have to do. I'm going to be different. I'm going to do things differently. I'm going to unite the party, but I'm also going to unite Washington. We're going to come up with bipartisan solutions. Does that sound like something out of President Trump's debate book? No. So how do you do that? You would have to be running against the president in a cycle where the president will have an outsized influence over the primary.

21:49Thom Tillis: Not necessarily setting us up well for the general, just take a look at what's happening in Texas. The president chose that nominee, and now we're spending tens of millions of dollars in what would have otherwise been a walk-in for John Cornyn. Well, what about Ted Cruz? He's not part of the administration. If the Trump administration is not looking super popular in 2027, he might be positioned to say, you know, I'm a tried and tested true conservative, and the Trump administration made some mistakes We're going to take the best of what they did, and we're going to take the best of the Republican Party tradition.

22:22I mean, what odds do you give that sort of a pitch?

22:25Thom Tillis: Not good. I mean, let's face it. The president is going to be the president throughout this whole process. Do you really believe that President Donald J. Trump, with whom I still maintain a good relationship even after some of these texts, do you really believe he's going to sit there and go, well, it's for the better of the party for me to take this criticism from Ted Cruz? I mean, you really think it's going to play out that way? not even in a parallel universe. It's just not going to work out that way. The one thing about Donald Trump is he's consistent across every parallel universe. It is not going to work out well for somebody that criticizes him.

22:59Thom Tillis: Whether it's valid criticism or not, it's just not going to work out well. What about the race for the next senator of North Carolina? The Real Clear Politics polling average, as we tape right now, has Michael Watley, the Republican, down by about nine points to former Governor Roy Cooper. Are there particular voter groups that Watley is struggling with? Yeah, 100%. It's the unaffiliated. The challenge that we have in North Carolina is we know that we're going to have the Republican base, the MAGA base behind Michael Watley. I mean, he was the state party chair. He was the RNC chair. But when you bring President Trump to a just outside of Charlotte for a rally, you're not thinking about the voting bloc that you need to win that election.

23:39Thom Tillis: It's unaffiliated. And I don't think that Michael's done a very good job of separating what I've tried to tell every member, separate where you do. Take the chance. Look, I've been married to my wife of 40 years, and I'm not 100 percent on all of her positions. Why does anybody think I'm going to be on Donald Trump? So do it in a respectful way, but separate if you genuinely have a different opinion that resonates with the voters who are going to get you elected. Michael hasn't shown that independence, and it's showing up in the polls. Have you endorsed Wadley? Are you campaigning with him? Nobody's asked me to endorse him, to be quite honest with you.

24:17Thom Tillis: And in the primary, if you look at Michael, to me, it's all about basis points. And Michael won the primary by 65 points. I would have felt better if he'd won it by about 51 because the incremental time and money to get those additional 14 points from our base voters is absolutely at the expense of the unaffiliated should need in the general. But that's interesting. They haven't asked for your support because if he's struggling among unaffiliated independent voters, maybe they think he'll lose some of the MAGA people, but this has got to be additive. Right now, there are just not enough of the core base voters to get them elected.

24:53Thom Tillis: We're 30 % of the electorate, for goodness sake. Democrats are 30%. Unaffiliated are 40%. The only unaffiliated that are conservative right now are the ones who think we're not crazy enough, right? So I don't know if they'll vote for Michael or not. What I do know, if you don't bite into that 40 % of the electorate, you are not going to win a statewide race in North Carolina. And look, I've had two races. My first race was$120 million all in. My second race was$300 million all in. My margin was always between one and a half and 1.7%. And if you tease through it, the unaffiliated is what got me over the finish line.

25:32So what's next for Tom Tillis? Come January, given all the bridges that you're burning, you may have to swim your way back across the Potomac, but do you have a second book in you?

25:40Thom Tillis: No, you know, the beauty of it is I haven't burned a bridge with Republicans I care about and Republicans that care about the Republican Party. I haven't burned a bridge with the business community. If the Democrats read this book, there's probably a few of them that are going to be disappointed because I credit Obama with starting this trend of political physics. You know, I'm going to go back into business. In fact, I was just thinking a couple of blocks down the road. I was up here quite frequently as a partner at Price Waterhouse down at Avenue of the Americas and covered banking, energy, media, telecommunications.

26:11Thom Tillis: I think I'll figure out a job. And you talk in the book about long distance bike riding. Yeah, yeah. Well, actually, mountain biking. Funny, I got into my political career proposing a single track mountain bike trail at a park and rec advisory board meeting in the town I was in, which hoodwinked me into getting involved in local politics. I became speaker when that mountain bike trail got built. Now I'm actually building another pump track literally in my backyard. And I'd like to get back into doing a little bit more aggressive mountain biking. Thank you for being here, Senator Tom Tillis. Thank you all for listening.

26:45You can email us at pwpodcast at wsj.com. And we'll be back tomorrow with another edition of Potomac Watch. If you're an RIA or looking to become one, Schwab Advisor Services is the Watson to your homes. Smart. Dependable. Always has your back. It's no mystery why they're the number one choice for RIAs who want to be the ultimate solution for their clients With all the wealth services, technology, and support your firm needs The difference is so obvious It's Schwabvius Follow the clues at schwabvius.com