Senator Thom Tillis, who is soon retiring from his seat in the U.S. Senate, was the featured guest on Monday’s (October 5) edition ofThe View, promoting his new book,How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents: The Trouble with Sycophants, Courage Outsourcing, and Partisan Groupthink, and he faced a volley of tough questions from the cohosts.
Whoopi Goldberg was the first out of the gate, saying, “Well, the book certainly lives up to his title. I mean, you go after a number of [Trump’s] policies and his hiring choices, and I have to say, you kind of voted for a lot of these folks, and so you also call him out for being a snowflake. So have we. And yet you still say you support him and call him an amazing political talent. What am I missing?”
“The fact that he’s won two national elections,” Tillis reasoned, pointing to Trump’s ability to create a “coalition” of supporters. (When it was then noted that he’s lost one, Tillis agreed, “That’s true.”)
Sara Haines then challenged Tillis over his argument that Trump’s staffers and cabinet members are to blame for the second administration’s failures, and he explained that theory as, “They come up with a bad idea, they sell the president on it, and he embraces it as his own.” He then argued that Trump had a win on border security but squandered it, adding, “I know that my party is going to suffer the consequences in November.”
After Tillis argued that there are some “good people” in Trump’s second administration, Ana Navarro then listed a specific example to counter him, pointing to Marco Rubio and saying, “I’ve known him since he was 18 years old. But it does us no good if the good people are complicit and silentwhile abusers of power are going on on a daily basis.” To that, Tillis deflected, saying that Barack Obama‘s administration overreached when it gained power, adding, “The whole premise of the book is saying, ‘Stop reading a win as a mandate, folks. All the American people are giving you an opportunity to do is show the nation respect and solve the problems you committed to.’”
Sunny Hostin took issue with that claim immediately, arguing, “I don’t think you could compare the overreach in the Obama administration to the overreach by this president. … What Trump has done is unprecedented, and I don’t think it’s fair to compare the two… I think it’s terribly disingenuous to make that type of comparison.” She then questioned him about a series of furious texts he had with Trump after Trump took credit for Tillis leaving the Senate, and Tillis said that he’s since talked to Trump on multiple occasions. When then asked if he was worried that Trump might leak his number, like he did to a fellow GOP colleague, Tillis said, “With all due respect, I’ve got his number, too.”
After the commercial break, Alyssa Farah Griffin had the next question, asking him about his regret over voting to confirm Pete Hegseth, and Tillis said, “I hope he gets fired” before justifying his vote by noting, “I got rid of the nominee before Hegseth, and that was Matt Gaetz” and “I was on the Senate Armed Services committee for eight years. I was going to defer to them, and we all made a mistake.”
Navarro then told Tillis, “You kind of break my heart” over his decisions to confirm Hegseth and other members of the cabinet. In a fiery back and forth, Navarro said, “I feel you were very inconsistent in this book because, on the one hand, you go through all of the reasons Hegseth was unqualified. You go through all of the reasons why [Kristi] Noem was unqualified. You kept calling her an ‘unqualified dog killer,’ and yet you voted for them.” After Tillis assented, Navarro continued, “You just voted to confirm Todd Blanche, who you in the book said you objected to the bogus investigation he reopened on James Comey and his involvement in a reparations fund for the January 6th people. So you’re voting for people who are rubber stamps and unqualified, but you keep doing it.”
Tillis then defended himself to say, “Blanche is one of the key reasons why Jay Powell is still on the Federal Reserve board. Blanche is one of the key reasons why the payout pot for punks fund is dead. In politics, you gotta play the hand that’s dealt to you.”
When Tillis then said Blanche will “try and give the president honest upward feedback,” Navarro exclaimed, “Oh come on!” adding “He doesn’t even want to look at … when a Russian oligarch just paid for Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding. There’s nothing to see here. So he’s not giving Donald Trump any pushback.”
“The only difference between you and I is I’ve had those discussions and I’ve seen the work, and I stand by my decisional plan,” Tillis said.
“And then you regret it,” Navarro said to conclude the discussion.
The View, weekdays, 11a/10c, ABC
