Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) has about 60 days left in Congress, and he's spending them picking a fight with the Secretary of Defense.
Uh, he, he is one of the reasons why we don't have the funding or guarantee for defense that we need. I think after the election, we..."
Tillis told CBS that Congress had roughly 60 days left. What he did not do, in that interview or anywhere else, was name a single funding request Hegseth has held up.
"But Pete Hegseth has a reckoning. Uh, he, he is one of the reasons why we don't have the funding or guarantee for defense that we need." — Sen. Thom Tillis, on CBS
The roll call is where the story gets awkward for Tillis. He was one of 50 senators who voted to confirm Hegseth in January 2025. Vice President JD Vance broke the tie. Switch Tillis's yes to a no and the vote is 49–51 — Hegseth is not confirmed. RedState, which flagged the hypocrisy in a piece circulating Wednesday, put the math plainly: when it counted, Tillis voted yes.
Regret is cheap after the fact. The vote is not.
The timing is not incidental. Former Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper beat Republican Michael Whatley on Tuesday, flipping a seat Republicans had held since 2015. Tillis, on his way out, had plenty to say about why his party lost. He told CBS he'd just put nearly $90 worth of gas in his pickup — his first fill-up in about two months — and asked what that bill looks like to somebody who fills up a couple of times a week. He did not say what he wanted the White House to do about the price of gas. He was, however, willing to put the loss on his own party.
He also told CBS he knew national themes wouldn't play well in North Carolina. In the same answer, he said the SAVE Act "also lost by a 65–35 margin in Maine" recently. Maine voters rejected Question 1 by 64.19 percent to 35.81 percent in November 2025 — a state measure that bundled photo ID with changes to absentee voting and ballot drop boxes. That is not the SAVE America Act. On July 2, Tillis reported... [paywall truncated]
On North Carolina itself, the comparison collapses. A February poll paid for by Heritage Action found 67 percent of likely North Carolina voters supported the SAVE America Act as described in the survey — proof of citizenship to register, ID to vote in federal elections — with 20 percent opposed. RedState's Ben Smith, who led the Tillis campaign's effort at UNC Chapel Hill in 2014, noted he hasn't campaigned for, donated to, or been in contact with the senator since.
So the retiring senator is leaving on a note of grievance against the Pentagon chief he personally confirmed, in a state where the voting-integrity agenda he now cites polled at two-to-one, after a loss he attributes to everything except his own record.
Our Take
Here's what Tillis is actually asking you to believe: that Pete Hegseth is a threat to defense funding, that this only became clear after the votes were counted and Tillis's seat was gone, and that the man who cast the 50th vote to confirm him is the right messenger for the warning.
He never named a held-up funding request. Not one. A senator with a real objection to Pentagon spending priorities can put a document on the floor and point to a line item. Tillis gave a CBS interview and a word — "reckoning" — and left the rest open.
If Tillis genuinely believed Hegseth was unfit in January 2025, he had a vote and a microphone and 21 months to use them. Vance wouldn't have needed the tiebreaker. The 60-day clock he's now waving around was always available to him, and so was the floor. He chose the exit interview instead.
North Carolina Republicans just lost a seat they'd held for a decade. The man retiring from it is spending his last weeks in Washington settling a score with the administration his own vote installed — and the people filling up their trucks at $90 a tank in his home state get a lecture about national themes instead of an answer. Patriots, ask yourself: if Hegseth was the problem, where was this reckoning when Tillis's yes was the deciding vote?
