Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) suggested on Wednesday that he would not vote in favor of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s confirmation at this time.
During an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Tillis said that when it came to Hegseth’s confirmation vote, he “had already informed my conference that I was going to defer to the Senate Armed Services vote.”
“If he got a unanimous vote out of Senate Armed Services, then I was going to defer to them,” Tillis said, referring to the Senate Armed Services Committee.
However, Tillis added later that he didn’t “regret the decision I made back then based on the facts as I knew them — then, but today, I am beginning to wonder if maybe Armed Services was a little bit generous with respect to their assessment of his capabilities as a manager of the world’s largest, most complex and arguably, consequential organization.”
“So, you don’t regret it, but if you had to do it again today, you probably wouldn’t vote yes?” Tapper replied.
“I think based on the information I have today,” Tillis said. “If all I had was the information on the day of the vote, I’d certainly vote for him again.”
In the same interview, Tillis also slammed Trump advisers, calling them amateurs.
“I don’t have a problem [with] President Trump. I got a — I got a problem with some of the people I consider to be amateurs, advising him,” Tillis said.
“I’m going to make it very clear to those guys, when you act like the president when I — when he’s out of the room, you don’t impress me. And they’ll hear more of that in the coming months,” he added later.
Republican senators have not been pleased about how Trump treated Tillis recently, with the president blasting the North Carolina Republican last week on social media after Tillis said he would not vote for the “big, beautiful bill.”
Tillis is viewed highly among colleagues as a team player with a focus on results, and numerous Republicans believed he would have had the best chance of keeping his seat for Republicans in next year’s election.
The Hill has reached out to the White House and the Department of Defense for comment.
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