Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) suggested 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 [Committee] vote.”
“If he got a unanimous vote out of Senate Armed Services, then I was going to defer to them,” Tillis said.
However, while Tillis added later that he didn’t “regret the decision I made back then based on the facts as I knew them” he said that “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 GOP megabill.
Tillis, who announced he would not seek reelection shortly after coming out against the bill, is viewed highly among colleagues as a team player with a focus on results, and numerous Republicans believed he was their best chance at keeping the seat in their column next year.
“We wish him well in his upcoming retirement,” Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson said of Tillis in an emailed response to The Hill.
The Hill has also reached out to the White House for comment.
Updated July 10 at 10:43 a.m. EDT