Republican’s forgiveness plea exposes ‘the entire problem’ with MAGA

Sen. Thom Tillis attends the committee vote on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., August 4, 2026. REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz

Outgoing Republican Sen. Thom Tillis is "seeking forgiveness" for his part in enabling the second Trump administration on his new book tour, per a new analysis from MS NOW, but in doing so, he has exposed "the entire problem" underlying the MAGA movement.

Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, is retiring from Congress at the end of his term in January, rather than seeking reelection after coming under fire from President Donald Trump for being insufficiently loyal and critical. Despite that, he also notably voted to confirm some of Trump's most destructive second-term Cabinet members, a fact he is now expressing regret over and seeking forgiveness for while promoting his new book, How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents, something that MS NOW's Luke Russert examined in a new piece published Saturday.

"Tillis’ new book is, in part, supposed to be him taking accountability for his role in advancing the rogues’ gallery of the Trump Cabinet, including Robert F. Kennedy — an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist whose brain worms outnumber his medical degrees," Russert explained. "Even a worm could have predicted what happened next. He fired all members of the Vaccine Advisory Board, handpicking multiple fellow vaccine skeptics as their replacements. That board overhauled the vaccine schedule — including for measles, which is seeing a comeback in states like Pennsylvania and South Carolina."

Russert noted that, before voting in favor of confirming Kennedy, Tillis publicly stated that he hoped the future HHS secretary would "go wild" on the role "as an outsider with new ideas." Russert highlighted a back-and-forth he had with Tillis over that comment during a guest spot on his show, The Weeknight, in which he asked the senator if Kennedy had gone far enough for him.

"As the father of a 10-week-old daughter — far too young for the routine measles vaccine, which begins at 12 to 15 months — I asked: 'Did he go wild enough for you?'" Russert detailed. "Tillis responded: 'I’m not worried about your daughter because you’re going to make an informed decision and you have the means and the access.' When I explained that — under the longtime guidance of actual experts — infants can’t receive the measles vaccine until after 12 months, Tillis responded: 'Is it illegal to get it sooner?' He went on to say that I 'don’t have to worry' about the new vaccine schedule because 'you’ve got an educated choice in the resources.'"

With that exchange in mind, Russert argued that Tillis had "summarized the entire problem with the MAGA philosophy and the Republicans like Tillis who helped it along, regardless of whatever they say about it now."

"Tillis seemed to think that the problem facing me was an individual one and that any consequences would be individual. Under this view, the United States is not a united country, but just a collection of hundreds of millions of rugged individualists whose actions have no effects on their neighbors," Russert argued. "According to Tillis, I could somehow get my child vaccinated early, so I shouldn’t have to worry. But at 10 weeks old, that was not a choice available to me."

He added: "This kind of zero-sum thinking is making us a weaker nation. If you have enough money for retirement, you shouldn’t worry about whether Social Security will help your neighbors. If your kids are in a good school, you shouldn’t worry about whether the educational system is falling apart. If you live on a hill, you shouldn’t worry about the homes being flooded in the valley. Setting aside the moral implications of ignoring the needs of your neighbors — and the rather old-fashioned question of whether we are our brother’s keeper — this isn’t how things work. If my neighbors are sick or poor or uneducated, that will affect me, too, eventually."

Russert ultimately suggested that while Tillis might now regret his hand in elevating the worst of Trump's Cabinet, he may not actually "understand why it was wrong in the first place."

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