Sen. Tillis’s courage and conundrum

North Carolina’s Sen. Thom Tillis demonstrated courage, loyalty and integrity when it comes to honoring campaign promises during the past couple of months. It made Tar Heels who didn’t even vote for him proud.

By defying President Donald Trump and voting against the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Tillis stood up to the world’s most powerful bully. His decision to vote against the bill came after he spent a fair amount of time on the telephone explaining to the president why he thought its cuts to Medicaid, which the president promised would not be cut when campaigning, were bad for individual states like his own, bad for the country and politically devastating.

Yet Tillis said he didn’t blame the president for the bill. He blamed the president’s “amateur” advisers. It was a remarkable show of loyalty to the president, or more likely to the Republican Party and his fellow lawmakers who have staked their careers and legacies on a successful Trump presidency.

Thom Tillis, U.S. Senator, NC

Tillis’s loyalty is admirable. Still, his reasoning is disingenuous. The president chose his advisers and, like any CEO, he is responsible for his choices. More to the point, whatever advice they give him, he is the decider-in-chief. And he, not they, is accountable for his decisions. One of two things is true. Either the president is a pawn of his advisers, or he supported the changes.

Why would Tillis provide him with cover?

If you believe his comments in his July 9 interview with Jake Tapper, it’s not hard to figure out. He’s rarely disagreed with Trump (only his advisers), he said. I have a vested interest in Trump being a successful president, he said. I’m a Republican and I will always be a Republican, he said.

“I’m never going to do anything to undermine my conference and I’m never going to surprise my conference. … I’m not that kind of guy,” Tillis told The Hill.

In late June, Tillis made his opposition to the “One Big Beautiful Bill” known to Trump as Republicans scrambled to secure enough votes to pass the bill. On June 28, the president trashed Tillis on Truth Social and promised to support a primary challenge against him. On June 29, Tillis issued a statement declaring he would not seek reelection. On July 1, he voted against the bill.

“If somebody wants to know why I’m not running, it’s because some bonehead told [Trump] to post something and pretend like that was going to affect me,” Tillis told Semafor on July 15, with regard to Trump’s social media attack. “It affected me in a way that said: ‘I’m done with this bullshit.’”

“I look forward to having the pure freedom to call the balls and strikes as I see fit …,” he wrote in the statement announcing his retirement.

As many a person has learned, devoted loyalty can insidiously compromise one’s integrity and that is the conundrum Tillis has found himself in and one he will have to negotiate for the next 18 months. So, what can we expect from our senior senator, who sits on the powerful Finance, Banking, and Judiciary committees, during the remainder of his term?

He’s given us some indication during the past few weeks.

He told Jake Tapper during a July 9 interview with CNN that he regretted voting to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. He bowed to pressure from Trump to vote for Hegseth’s confirmation despite his own reservations. He told Tapper that, “With the passing of time, I think it’s clear he’s out of his depth as a manager of a large, complex organization.” The vote to confirm Hegseth was 51-50 with the vice president breaking a tie vote. Had Tillis voted no, Hegseth would not have been confirmed.

Even before the dust up over the “OBBB,” Tillis refused to fall in line behind Trump’s nomination of conservative lawyer Ed Martin for the post of  U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. Trump appointed Martin to the job on an interim basis in January. Tillis refused to support him for a permanent appointment based on Martin’s support of the Jan. 6 rioters.

“The only real red line that I have … has to do with anyone who condoned the Jan. 6 attack,” Tillis told Semafor July 15. “If you’re coming before any of my committees, and I can deny cloture, you’re never going to get confirmed over the next 18 months. That’s a red line. Jan. 6 is a big red line for me.”

Soon after he was inaugurated, Trump pardoned even those convicted of the Jan. 6 attacks. Tillis opposed the pardons of violent offenders at the time.

Tillis’s refusal to support Martin sank his nomination.

But on July 29, Tillis voted with Republican colleagues to appoint another controversial nominee, former Trump lawyer and top Justice Department official Emil Bove, to a lifetime post on the 3^rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Tillis supported the nomination even though Bove accused FBI officials of “insubordination” because they refused to hand over the names of agents who investigated the Jan. 6 attack and he ordered the firing of a group of prosecutors involved in those Jan. 6 criminal cases. Whistleblowers also accused Bove of suggesting the Trump administration might need to ignore a court order blocking deportations, an accusation Bove denied.

On July 15, Tillis called out President Trump during an interview with the hosts of Charlotte’s WBT-FM talk show Good Morning BT for attempting to dismiss as “boring” the actions of Jeffery Epstein, a disgraced billionaire and convicted sex offender whose death, while in jail awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges, has been ruled a suicide.

“I have to disagree with the president,” Tillis said. “I don’t think human trafficking of young teenage girls being exploited by billionaires on a private island is boring.”

He urged the President to honor his campaign promise to release the Justice Department files on Epstein. “Maybe I’m just getting old,” he said. “But I could’ve sworn that we had people campaigning and [saying], ‘If I get elected, we’re going to release the files,’ right? Release the damn files! Get over it!’

He predicted one of two outcomes: “One outcome is that it’s a nothing-burger and people should be embarrassed by making it a something-burger when running for election. The other outcome: It is a something-burger and people should go to prison.”

Tillis has made it clear that he supports the Trump administration’s conservative agenda and wants to work with his Republican colleagues to implement it. He’s also made it clear that he wants Trump’s presidency to be a success.

But he’s put Trump on notice that he won’t be bullied. “I’ve tried to defer to him and show him respect, but I do have a habit of mirroring the behavior that I’m presented with,” he told Semafor.

It seems unlikely that Tillis will be intimidated, but how he will navigate the loyalty vs. integrity conundrum remains to be seen. Either way, it could well have profound implications for him, for his constituents and for the country.

Joy Franklin is a journalist and writer who served as editorial page editor of the Asheville Citizen-Times for 10 years. Prior to that she served as executive editor of the Times-News in Hendersonville.