Retiring GOP Senator Calls Hegseth Vote His 'Biggest Regret' as Iran War Drags On

The Exit Interview Nobody in the White House Wanted to Happen

Tillis, the senior senator from North Carolina, sat down with CBS News' 60 Minutes for what amounts to one of the more remarkable farewell tours in recent Senate history. He is 66, he is done, and he is talking. Loudly.

This is a man who voted to confirm every single one of Trump's Cabinet nominees. Every one. And he is now on national television calling two of them — Hegseth and former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem — "the poster children for men and women who should never have the authority they've been granted." The cognitive dissonance is staggering, but at least he's being honest about it now.

On Hegseth and the Iran War: 'He Probably Didn't Listen to His Best Military Advice'

CBS News reports that Tillis holds Hegseth significantly responsible for how the Iran War has unfolded since its opening strikes. He told 60 Minutes that while he supported the president's initial decision to go to war, Hegseth "probably didn't listen to his best military advice" after the first strike succeeded, and failed to shift the military to a more appropriate posture afterward.

Tillis is now calling for Hegseth's resignation. That's a United States senator calling for the sitting Secretary of Defense to resign over a war that senator voted to support. That sentence should probably be read twice.

The criticism of Hegseth isn't just strategic. Tillis frames it as a competence problem that goes to the heart of Trump's Cabinet selections. As he told 60 Minutes, some people got those jobs because they looked good for the role, not because they could do it. "Right out of Central Casting" was the phrase he reached for, attributing it to Trump himself.

Renee Good and Alex Peretti: The Moment Tillis Lost It on Noem

If there's one moment that defined Tillis as something other than just another compliant Republican backbencher, it was the Kristi Noem hearing. According to CBS News, the deportation campaign in Minneapolis resulted in the deaths of two American citizens — Renee Good and Alex Peretti — at the hands of federal agents. Noem's response, apparently, was to suggest they might have been domestic terrorists.

Tillis tore into her on the Senate floor. "The fact that you can't admit to a mistake which looks like under investigation is going to prove that Miss Good and Mr. Peretti probably should not have been shot in the face, and in the back!" That's a direct quote. He helped accelerate her departure from the Cabinet.

He also told 60 Minutes he was furious about the $200 million the Department of Homeland Security was spending on an ad campaign featuring Noem riding a horse while two American civilians were dead and the department was calling them terrorists. Two hundred million dollars. For a horse ad. While people were shot in the face.

The One Big Beautiful Bill and the Medicaid Fight That Ended His Political Career

The immediate trigger for Tillis's retirement announcement wasn't the war, or Noem, or the book. It was Medicaid. Tillis announced he was voting no on the One Big Beautiful Bill, arguing it would push too many low-income North Carolinians off Medicaid coverage. The president's response, per CBS News, was to call Tillis "a talker and complainer, not a doer" and threaten to recruit a primary challenger to run against him.

Tillis's response was to announce he wasn't running at all. Then he wrote a book.

The book is called "How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents," a riff on the Dale Carnegie classic, and the cover features unflattering photos of his least favorite administration officials. He told 60 Minutes it's aimed primarily at "the more recent" president, though he noted he also managed to antagonize Biden and Obama along the way. Points for consistency.

The Tightrope Act, and Why It Ultimately Failed

CBS News frames Tillis's Senate career as a high-wire act — voting reliably Republican while talking like a maverick, criticizing administration officials while insisting he just wants the president to succeed. It's a performance that bought him years of relative safety inside the Trump coalition. But there are limits to how long you can stand on a wire and throw things at the people holding it up.

Tillis told 60 Minutes his fundamental critique isn't with Trump's goals but with how his team executed them. "Most of the issues that we're dealing with here have less to do with what he wanted to accomplish but how he went about it," he said. It's the classic Republican dodge — the president is fine, it's the people around him who are the problem. But Tillis at least has the receipts to back up parts of it.

He grew up moving nearly every year across the South, one of six kids, his family bouncing between rented houses and trailer parks depending on how things were going. He told 60 Minutes that background is why he reacts so quickly to arguments about affordability and economic security. Whether that explains the Medicaid vote or just makes it more sympathetic depends entirely on your priors.