WASHINGTON — Republican Sen. Thom Tillis says in a new book that his deciding vote to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in January 2025 is the “biggest regret of my career” and that he also “should’ve stopped” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from becoming Health and Human Services secretary in the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term. In “How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents,” to be published Tuesday, the North Carolina senator defends his decision at the time to not be “the lone voice in the wilderness” preventing Trump’s nominees from confirmation. But Tillis makes clear he was always skeptical of allegations about Hegseth’s turbulent management style, treatment of women and excessive drinking. Hegseth denied all the allegations. “I know for a fact that there are others like me,” Tillis writes, “Republicans who agreed to go along with the early demands of the Trump team no matter how ridiculous they were, believing that failing to do so would mean the end of their political career, and who now see that things have gone way too far.” He writes that he can count at least 30 of his GOP colleagues who have “expressed reservations (to put it mildly) about many of the president’s actions in private. Then, when the reporters showed up with their cameras and microphones, they’d have nothing but nice things to say.” Tillis, who announced last year that he would not run for reelection in a “breaking point” with the president on his sweeping tax and spending cuts package, is publishing the book in his final months in office. He joins a long list of Republicans who have ratcheted up their public denunciations of Trump once they had less to lose politically. Still, Tillis mostly deflects full blame from Trump, saying, “my beef is not with him, but the idiots he’s got working for him.” He calls the president “an amazing political talent.” At the same time, he warns of a slippery slope toward authoritarianism and urges his colleagues to “wake up” and push back on Trump more often, for their own political good. Executive overreach, he says, doesn’t work and sooner or later, “comes back to bite the majority party in the ass.” Tillis also predicts a “bloodbath” for Republicans in November’s midterm elections. “All along, we’ve had multiple chances to get off the path and avoid the giant bronze monster chasing us down,” he writes. Regrets his votes for Hegseth and Kennedy The book is filled with cuss words and condemnations. He criticizes Trump’s tariffs, the aggressive immigration raids that Tillis says were an effort to “intentionally sow disorder” and the Iran war, which he initially supported. He said the war can only end with a coalition of willing nations and if Trump gets “Pete Hegseth the hell out of the way.” Tillis pushed Hegseth’s confirmation vote late into the evening on Jan. 24, 2025, as he weighed his decision, talking to the White House, people who had worked with Hegseth and Hegseth himself. In the end, he said he couldn’t corroborate the worst allegations and would support Hegseth’s confirmation. His vote brought the total to 50-50, and Vice President JD Vance broke the tie. On his vote for Kennedy, Tillis writes that “I guess it’s easy to say now, but I’m the one who has to live with that vote and all the havoc Kennedy’s tenure has caused the country as a result.” On both votes, he says he didn’t want to be the deciding factor. “I had no intention of letting my colleagues outsource their courage to me while they pretended to go along with the questionable nomination President Trump had put forward,” he writes. If you oppose Trump on everything, “you lose all influence,” Tillis says. “If you oppose him and lose, you are in even worse shape.” He strongly criticizes several of Trump’s other initial picks for the Cabinet in the book, including former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. Tillis describes his ‘breaking point’ over the tax bill Tillis’s surprise announcement in June 2025 that he wouldn’t be running for reelection came as he escalated criticism against Trump and his “ Big Beautiful Bill ” of tax and spending cuts. Trump attacked Tillis on social media after the senator said he couldn’t support the bill’s cuts to Medicaid. Tillis says he thought to himself, “I’m done.” “Everyone reaches a breaking point,” he writes. He texted the president asking him to look for his replacement in the Senate, to which Trump replied “I am! DJT.” In May 2026, Trump again attacked Tillis, calling him a “QUITTER!” on social media, among other insults. Tillis ends the book with a profanity-laced text he sent to the president in response. “I care if you fail and right now we are failing,” Tillis wrote to Trump. Mary Clare Jalonick, The Associated Press
