Sen. Thom Tillis says that, without checks on power, "we will have a sort of dictator king if we're not careful"

As Sen. Thom Tillis exits the Senate, he's blasting many of the advisers President Trump has surrounded himself with as "sycophants, and calling on his colleagues to stand up to executive power like the co-equal branch of government they are."

The 66-year-old senior senator from North Carolina unloads on what he calls the "WTF moments" of the second Trump administration in a new book, "How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents." Having served in the Senate during the Barack Obama, Joe Biden and both Trump presidencies, Tillis said he's increasingly worried about how the nation's system of checks and balances is being tested by the outsized influence of the executive branch.

"We will have a sort of dictator king if we're not careful," he said.

Make the Senate great again?

Every recent White House has been eager to govern by executive order, something that's been especially true during the current Trump administration, Tillis said. Presidents, he said, fail to understand that Congress is a coequal branch that should be treated as a peer, and that Congress needs to act as such.

"I would say the same thing for Democratic-controlled Senate under Biden and Obama," he said. "We always make the mistake when our guy's in office of conveying power to the White House. And I've had a real problem with that because it almost always comes back to bite you."

He writes in his book of the risks of authoritarianism. Tillis said there's been "constant escalation" across four administrations of presidents ignoring Congress. 

"I want checks and balances. I want all three branches to have their individual role and continue to check power as they have for 250 years," he said. "I think because we've been such a successful democracy for so long, it's hard for the American people to understand how quickly we can lose it all."

The Tillis tightrope act

Tillis was first elected to the Senate in the 2014 midterm elections, just before the rise of Mr. Trump and his Make America Great Again populist movement took over the Republican Party. He said he's the same kind of conservative now that he was back then: "pro-Second Amendment, pro-life, limited government, fiscal restraint."

"The only difference between me and a lotta people that call themselves true conservatives is I got a long list of things that were ratified and they don't," he said. 

The senator is now exiting Washington after a series of fights with the White House. The breaking point, he says, came in June 2025, after Tillis announced he would vote against Mr. Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, arguing that it would push too many low-income North Carolinians off Medicaid. 

Mr. Trump responded by calling Tillis "a talker and complainer, not a doer," and threatening to back a primary challenger against Tillis. The senator decided he would retire instead of fighting for his seat. 

"I respect the president. I still feel like we have an odd relationship, where I've clearly made him angry," Tillis said recently. That was before details of his profanity-laced private texts with Trump about what prompted his retirement leaked, because Tillis included them as part of his upcoming book.  

Tillis said he is not done fighting, recently calling for Trump to fire Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

It should be noted that Tillis voted to confirm all of Mr. Trump's Cabinet nominees, including Hegseth.  But he now calls  that vote at the start of the second Trump administration his "biggest regret." 

While Tillis said he is glad "the president went in" to Iran, he thinks "they got so caught up after the immense success of the first strike that Hegseth probably didn't listen to his best military advice and say, 'Now we should probably move to a different posture.'"

It's not the first time Tillis has gone after a member of Trump's cabinet. Last March at a senate hearing, he leveled a blistering critique of Department of Homeland Security Advisor Kristi Noem, calling out, among other things, the way she handled the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.  that went viral, Tillis ripped into Noem. "I was thinking about her calling people that were shot, potentially domestic terrorists," he said. "That's proven not to be true."

Two days later, the president fired her.  

"I think Noem and Hegseth are probably the poster children for men and women who should never have the authority they've been granted," Tillis said. 

It's one example of the tightrope that Tillis has walked in the second Trump administration: saying how much he wants the president to succeed, while heaping blame on his advisers and subordinates. Besides Noem and Hegseth, Tillis s also highly critical of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, for "not looking around corners for" Mr. Trump.

Tillis' balancing act in Washington also extends to the events of Jan. 6, 2021. The senator is still angry about the attack on the Capitol, and threat to the peaceful transfer of power, calling what happened that day "despicable." Still, Tillis elected not to convict Mr. Trump after he left office during his second impeachment trial, criticizing the process as rushed and politicized.

"Cheapening the impeachment process to prevent somebody from running in the future, I just don't buy it," he said.

An "electoral bloodbath" in the midterms

Asked if he fears a Jan. 6-like reaction if Trump-supported candidates lose their elections during the midterms, Tillis was somber. 

"I think there's a risk. I really do," he said, adding, "It would be another unforced error if we do that."  

Tillis predicts Republicans are about to suffer an "electoral bloodbath" in the upcoming midterm elections, with bread-and-butter affordability issues a main concern. Still, he said many of his colleagues are afraid to break with the White House.

In his book, Tillis writes that at least 30 Republican senators have expressed reservations about many of Mr. Trump's actions, but usually are only willing to speak up privately, fearing that if the president decides to target them, their days will be numbered. 

"They don't want to bear the weight of the president. I get that. You're up for reelection? He'll target you in a primary. And so look, you know what all martyrs have in common? They're dead," Tillis said. "There were probably a few instances where if [you] kind of ripped the bandaid off early, then I think we'd have had a lot better midterm environment than we're confronted with now."

Read the full transcript of the segment.