Profiles in poltroonery: Senator Thom Tillis

Recognizing the cowards who choose Donald Trump over our republic

(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Note: This is the first installment of an occasional series here at The Watch in which we’ll scorn and ridicule politicians who could have done something to address the current crisis — but chose not to act.

The list of public officials who have debased themselves to demonstrate fealty to Donald Trump is a long one — and grows longer by the day. But it’s hard to think of a more disgraceful example of cowardice than North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis’s behavior during the debate over Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon.

Hegseth is the least qualified person ever chosen to lead the Department of Defense, and by a wide margin. He would arguably be the worst nominee for any cabinet position were it not for the fact that Trump has given him several worthy competitors.

I — and I think most reasonable people — worry that the largest, most powerful military in the history of the world is now under the command of a man who wrote an entire book about how the U.S. should embark on a modern-day “crusade.” I worry that the new secretary of defense has advocated using the military to violently suppress First Amendment-protected protests, that he says the U.S. should withdraw from the Geneva Conventions, and that he believes that women and non-white people only obtain elite and prestigious military positions through affirmative action and “DEI,” not merit. I think it’s especially repugnant that the Pentagon is now under the command of a man who successfully lobbied Donald Trump to pardon war criminals — men whose crimes were reported not by some politically-oriented NGO or meddling foreign government, but by the soldiers who served with them.

Most importantly, I worry that when asked the easiest, most basic, most fundamental question anyone who seeks to lead the Department of Defense could possibly be asked — whether he’d follow an unlawful or unconstitutional order from a president — Hegseth couldn’t bring himself to utter the easiest possible answer.

“No.”

Instead, Hegseth feigned indignation at the mere suggestion that a leader as honorable and pure of heart as Donald Trump would ever contemplate an unconstitutional order. Never mind the fact that Trump already had. Hegseth was given a softball of an opportunity to demonstrate his allegiance to the Constitution. He defended Donald Trump instead.

---

---

But I don’t share Thom Tillis’s politics. So I’m sure many of my own worries about Pete Hegseth probably don’t bother Thom Tillis much. So let’s focus instead on the things Thom Tillis ought to be worried about.

Thom Tillis should be worried about Pete Hegseth’s leadership experience. That experience consists of starting two veterans’ nonprofit organizations — then promptly running them into the ground. His incompetence and mismanagement of funds while helming those organizations was alarming enough to generate written complaints from his colleagues and subordinates.

Thom Tillis should also be worried about Hegseth’s alleged drinking problem, which contributed to his failures at those organizations. Coworkers, including those at Fox News, described Hegseth drinking on the job and getting black-out drunk. They recounted incidents in which Hegseth was drunk in public, including one in which he had to be forcibly removed from the strip club to which he had taken some donors.

It’s hard to think of a job for which a drinking problem ought to be more immediately disqualifying — and for which the repercussions of impaired decision making could be more consequential — than leading the largest, most powerful military in the world. But this apparently doesn’t bother Thom Tillis.

Tillis should be also worried that Hegseth plans to purge the Pentagon of generals and admirals, the people with the most experience and institutional knowledge about how to run the military. He should be worried that Hegseth has professed complete subservience to Trump, a man who has disparaged prisoners of war for “getting captured”; has been dismissive of core military principles like adhering to rules of engagement, the prosecution of war crimes, and posse comitatus; and who has repeatedly expressed disgust at the mere sight of wounded veterans.

Then there’s the sexual misconduct. Hegseth has been credibly accused of sexual assault. Notably, we didn’t learn about this incident because the accuser came forward years later with the aid of Gloria Allred or Chuck Schumer. We learned about it because she went to the hospital shortly after the incident and the hospital then contacted the police. We know about it because there’s a police report. The accuser is married, Republican, and met Hegseth at a conservative political conference.

Like most Republicans, Thom Tillis has made it clear with his support of Donald Trump that he does not believe that credible accusations of sexual assault should be a barrier to holding political office. But you’d think he’d at least be concerned that the leader of the Department of Defense withheld this accusation from the president who appointed him — and that if he was willing to do that, there might be other information out there that could be used as leverage against him.

Hegseth himself has been married three times, and has admitted to repeated infidelity. Among the men and women Hegseth now leads at the Pentagon, adultery is a crime. These are things that one would think would turn the stomach of a conservative like Thom Tillis.

For a short time, these revelations had Hegseth’s nomination on the ropes. But after the Matt Gaetz nomination crashed and burned, the Trump administration and MAGA warriors decided that Pete Hegseth would be their firewall. They decided they needed to demonstrate that Donald Trump is so powerful that a caucus of troop-loving, flag-waving, national defense-boosting Republicans will confirm a buffoonish letch like Hegseth to lead the military simply because Donald Trump has willed it to happen — that not even a meager four such flag-waving, troop-loving, national-defense loving Republican senators would have the spine to defy him.

So the MAGA brigades went to work. They first targeted Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst — a woman who herself was sexually assaulted, and who has been outspoken about combatting sexual misconduct in the armed forces. So right-wing radio and podcasts focused their anger and their listeners on Ernst. They publicly shamed a survivor of sexual assault for daring to question the judgment of a president accused of sexual assault — and the leadership of a man also credibly accused of sexual assault — to lead an organization with a history of covering up sexual assault. They threatened Ernst with a well-funded primary opponent. Ernst capitulated within a couple days.

---

---

This brings us to Tillis. According to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, at some point Tillis met with Hegseth’s former sister-in-law, who told Tillis that Hegseth’s ex-wife at times feared for her safety, to the point where the two had assembled a plan for her to escape him if necessary. Tillis assured this woman that if she came forward publicly and signed an affidavit attesting to Hegseth’s drinking and abuse, he and other Republican senators would vote against Hegseth, and that would prevent his confirmation.

Throughout Hegseth’s hearings, Republican senators dismissed the accounts of his past misconduct as “anonymous allegations.” This was patently false even then. Plenty of people had accused Hegseth of drunkenness, lechery, and mismanagement under their own names, and made themselves available for Republican senators to interview. Those Republican senators chose not to meet with these people.

So Hegseth’s former sister-in-law came forward. This would have been a brave and patriotic thing to do during any administration. But this was an especially brave and patriotic time to do it. Because we know that regular people who cross Trump and his allies can expect a storm of harassment, fury, and death threats.

This woman was willing to endure all of that, largely because of assurances from Thom Tillis that her bravery and patriotism would actually make a difference.

It did not make a difference. And that’s largely because this woman’s bravery was no match for Thom Tillis’s cowardice.

As the Senate began to vote on his nomination, Hegseth posted a denial of the allegations on X. For added measure, Hegseth included the woman’s name, just to make sure that MAGA nation would know where to direct their anger.

Tillis by that point had told colleagues he’d be voting against Hegseth. He claims it was Hegseth’s response on X that persuaded him to switch his vote.

Over the weekend, reporting from the New York Times makes clear that this is a lie. Tillis was actually afraid that Donald Trump would take away his meager morsel of power.

Mr. Trump had gotten word that Senator Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, planned to oppose Pete Hegseth, the former “Fox & Friends” weekend host who was his choice for Pentagon chief, and who faced accusations of excessive drinking and abusing women. If Mr. Tillis could not be brought to heel by that night, there would be enough Republican “no” votes to sink Mr. Hegseth’s confirmation, a humiliating defeat at the dawn of Mr. Trump’s second term.

Turning to a group of North Carolina lawmakers who were flying with him to survey storm damage in their state, Mr. Trump noted Mr. Tillis’s impending defection and posed a question: Which of them wanted his endorsement for a primary challenge to the senator next year?

The implication was clear: Mr. Tillis’s refusal to back Mr. Hegseth could cost him his seat. By that night, Mr. Tillis, who had been toiling behind the scenes for days to kill Mr. Hegseth’s nomination so he could avoid having to publicly cross Mr. Trump, would vote to confirm Mr. Hegseth to control the most powerful military force in the world.

Hegseth was confirmed 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance casting the deciding vote. Without Tillis, Hegseth would not have been confirmed.

Thom Tillis persuaded a woman to do a brave thing. Then Thom Tillis turned tail, ran, and left that woman to fend for herself.

A week after taking office, Donald Trump issued an executive order barring transgender people from serving in the military.

The language in the order is infuriatingly Pecksniffian, accusing trans soldiers who want only to serve their country of the sort of dishonor Trump and Hegseth have exhibited their entire lives.

“[The] . . . adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual's sex conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life.”

That excerpt comes from a decree issued by a man who slept with a porn star while his wife was at home with their baby, who is well-known for refusing to pay his employees and contractors, and who had fake magazine covers with his photo mocked up to hang in his golf clubs. And it will be implemented by a defense secretary who spent funds intended for veterans on booze and strippers.

But there’s more.

“A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member,”

Again, this comes from a president credibly accused of sexual misconduct by 26 women, who once boasted about walking into the dressing room while teenage beauty pageant contestants were getting dressed, who has habitually bragged about charitable donations he never made, and who was shown to have lied more than 30,000 times during his first administration. It will be implemented by a defense secretary also credibly accused of sexual assault, who is also an admitted philanderer, and who has expressed his complete devotion to said president.

The thing about Thom Tillis is that he knows better. Or at least he once did. The senator once supported gay marriage, and was once critical of Trump’s immigration policy. He once supported protections for whistleblowers, and was seen as a possible dealmaker between the parties.

But in 2023, the Republican Party of North Carolina censured Tillis for exhibiting that sort of independence. Tillis is now up for reelection in 2026, and this is the state Republican Party that nominated a self-declared “Black Nazi” for governor.

So Tillis would need to become a different man. A lesser man. A craven, self-debasing, grateful-for-whatever-scraps-of-power-his-leader-might-throw-his-way sort of man. He’d need to become the sort of man who would persuade a woman to put herself at risk for her country, then run like hell from her with all the dignity of a flouncy, Josh Hawley skedaddle.

---

---

Once he’d offered up his dignity, there was really nothing left other than to go full-on MAGA. So the man who once criticized Trump for diverting money from the Pentagon to build a border wall — writing in the Washington Post, “I cannot justify providing the executive with more ways to bypass Congress” — today has no problem with Trump and Musk unconstitutionally reappropriating money and deleting entire Congressionally-mandated agencies as they rampage through the federal government. The DOGE power grab “runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense,” Tillis said earlier this month, but “nobody should bellyache about that.”

Tillis has since voted to confirm Russell Vought, a man whose life’s work is to “provide the executive with more ways to bypass Congress.” The once-strident defender of vaccines voted for RFK, Jr. to head HHS. And the same senator who on his website calls NATO “the most successful alliance in the history of the free world” and claims to support holding “Russia accountable for its belligerent actions, including the illegal invasion of Ukraine,” voted to confirm Tulsi Gabbard for the most sensitive national security position in U.S. government. Gabbard posted on X in 2023 that “Zelensky, Biden, NATO, congressional and media neocons are insane. And we are insane if we passively allow them to lead us into this holocaust like sheep to the slaughter.” She has defended Vladimir Putin on Russian state TV.

Tillis once said that the violent January 6th rioters “need to be held accountable and go to prison.” By November of last year, he was retweeting Daddy Trump memes about how “accountability is coming,” even as Trump was promising to pardon all the rioters, and to persecute those who tried to hold them accountable.

Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, celebrated the January 6th rioters by producing a weird dystopian single of them singing the national anthem — which then became a fixture at Trump rallies. Patel also started a fund to compensate the rioters and their families, and has vowed to exact revenge on the FBI agents and prosecutors who investigated and charged them. Tillis not only supports Patel to lead the FBI, he introduced Patel with a warm endorsement at his confirmation hearing.

We’ve by now grown accustomed to Republican politicians rushing to demean themselves in their fervor to win Trump’s favor. But even among this particular caucus of cowards, Thom Tillis earns our first Profiles in Poltroonery award for shoving a woman far more honorable than him into the path of an oncoming bus en route to his humiliation.

---

---