Coming Tillis Memoir Depicts Top Trump Administration Figures as ‘Grifting Sycophants and Useful Idiots’

Senator Thom Tillis, the retiring two-term Republican from North Carolina, has a new book coming out naming figures he describes as the “grifting sycophants and useful idiots” of the second Trump administration. He has consistently been calling on President Trump to fire some of his top aides, saying they are not serving him well. Mr. Tillis’s book, “How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents,” is due to be released in October, just weeks before the midterm elections. Mr. Tillis will not be on the ballot this year after Mr. Trump came after him for not sufficiently backing his legislative agenda and some of his nominees. When Mr. Trump threatened to find a primary challenger to run against Mr. Tillis, the senator opted to retire after 12 years on Capitol Hill. According to a description from Mr. Tillis’s publishing house, HarperCollins, the book is a “bare-knuckled, darkly funny wake-up call.” The teaser describes Mr. Tillis as “a true conservative who doesn’t mind a good scrap in a Congress that has lost its nerve.”The book will focus not just on his own experiences as a United States senator, but on what he sees as the failures of the Trump administration and those who populate it. The cover of the book features the White House deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — two men whom he describes as “MAGATS,” a play on words conflating Mr. Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan with the small bugs that will eat nearly anything placed before them. Mr. Tillis is also set to describe his dealings with the Health and Human Services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as well as a former Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, who was forced out of her job earlier this year after a number of Republican senators grew frustrated with her performance. Mr. Tillis calls the whole group “grifting sycophants and useful idiots.”Neither the White House nor the Pentagon had reacted publicly to the comments as of midday Thursday.“Tillis drags readers inside a Senate that too often behaves like a group of teenagers in a bad parody of a horror movie — heading straight toward the chainsaws instead of a nearby getaway car,” the summary of the book states. It says Mr. Tillis argues that “fear, outsourced courage, and groupthink are hollowing out the party that Tillis spent much of his adult life building, and he’s not going to let it get dragged down without a fight.”Describing Mr. Tillis “journey from trailer parks to the halls of power,” HarperCollins says the senator “offers a bracing tonic to stiffen spines, rebuild institutions, and keep the American experiment from going off the rails.” Mr. Tillis earned Mr. Trump’s ire last year, when he refused to support the president’s nominee to serve as the top federal prosecutor for the nation’s capital, Ed Martin, because of Mr. Martin’s defense of individuals who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He also opposed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, saying the cuts to Medicaid would devastate his home state of North Carolina. Earlier this year, Mr. Tillis said in an interview with NOTUS that he regrets casting the deciding vote to confirm Mr. Hegseth to lead the Pentagon. Mr. Tillis had been on the fence about the nomination through the monthslong confirmation process due to allegations of sexual assault and Mr. Hegseth’s lack of experience in running a large organization. In the end, Mr. Tillis’ approval created a tie after three GOP senators had voted no, allowing Vice President JD Vance to break the tie. “In retrospect, he’s just had so many missed starts,” Mr. Tillis said. “What he’s done with the press corps, his sort of bravado when he goes into NATO meetings, you know, his wanting to change the name to Department of War … all that is just sophomoric.”

Coming Tillis Memoir Depicts Top Trump Administration Figures as ‘Grifting Sycophants and Useful Idiots’

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