GOP senator calls for Trump defense chief to be fired

When outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) decided not to seek reelection in the 2026 midterms, he likely avoided the fate that Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) and at least five Indiana state lawmakers recently suffered when they were voted out of office via GOP primaries. Trump was angry with Massie, Cassidy and the others, railing against them relentlessly and endorsing MAGA primary challengers — and Massie realized he was in danger as well. But Tillis plans to serve out the rest of his term, and he candidly spoke his mind about the Trump administration and the state of the Republican Party during an interview with Politico's Jordain Carney.

Although the conservative senator isn't a full-fledged Never Trumper, he hasn't been shy about criticizing the president at times. And he attacked a variety of Trump administration and MAGA policies during the interview, giving fellow Republicans what Carney described as "a dose of bitter medicine."

"Every time I've disagreed with the president," Tillis told Politico, "it's been almost exclusively because I think it's divergent from Republicans' interest in getting reelected this November. Every single time. The health care policy that got airdropped in the 'big beautiful bill,' I knew it was going to be a problem. It is a problem now. Now, everybody sees that. That's why I objected to the reconciliation last year. The reason I'm objecting to the ballroom and the slush fund for the DOJ — bad politics, really bad timing, bad policy. I mean, that's the trifecta. Every time I have opposed this president is because I believe it's at odds with getting Republicans reelected."

Tillis offered a scathing critique of Pete Hegseth's performance as defense secretary, once again calling for him to be fired.

Tillis told Politico, "I suspect that Hegseth cast aside concerns he was hearing from some of the finest people that ever served in uniform and took his cowboy-ish approach to going into Iran. I'm glad the president did what he did in Iran; I'm not glad that he has Hegseth advising him on the details…. I'd love to see Pete Hegseth fired because he's incompetent and doing a horrible job."

During the interview, Tillis criticized Trump's "anti-weaponization fund" as "an embarrassment" — calling for Congress to "nuke it." And he was highly critical of U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) investigations of outgoing U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell and others.

Tillis told Politico, "I’m thinking about the picture that right now is the only basis I have for a new indictment against (former FBI Director) Comey. Some of the other bogus lawsuits from now no-longer-acting acting U.S. attorneys. All that, I want to know whose fingerprints were on it. I don't think big DOJ knew about the Powell investigation, so I wouldn't hold that against them; that was a boneheaded move in the bowels of DOJ. But anything where they were in the decision loop, yeah, they got a lot of questions to answer to get my support."