Thom Tillis was asked why he won’t criticize Trump. His answer was lame. | Opinion
In a Sunday appearance on ABC News, U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis was asked a long overdue question: if Tillis has problems with Donald Trump’s administration, why doesn’t he have a problem with Trump?
“It was Donald Trump who put Kristi Noem in charge of the Department of Homeland Security, who has given Stephen Miller the authority that he has. It was Donald Trump who first talked about wanting to acquire Greenland,” ABC “This Week” host Jonathan Karl said to Tillis. “These are his policies and the people he chose to execute them. Doesn’t the buck stop with him?”
Tillis responded, “No.”
“I still think that it goes back to the advice that they’re getting,” Tillis continued. “And if one person can’t convince the president then you get some of the other people together.”
At what point do we acknowledge that the president is, you know, the president? He’s supposed to have agency and a mind of his own. He shouldn’t be so easily swayed. But the way Tillis makes it sound, Trump is just a puppet following the orders of people behind the scenes, and Tillis doesn’t seem nearly as concerned about that as he should be.
There’s certainly a strategy around Tillis’ choice to criticize Trump’s administration without actually criticizing the man himself. He’s giving Trump someone else to blame, because it might be the only way he’ll listen. And it’s probably spared him from more of Trump’s attacks. (Ask Thomas Massie.) But it’s not fooling anyone, Trump included.
With Cabinet nominations, for example, names are likely suggested to Trump, not the other way around, Tillis said.
“I wouldn’t expect him to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all the people he’s put forward,” Tillis said. “I don’t have any problem with Kristi Noem the person, but it’s clear to me that no one should have said that the experience she had as governor, or the brief period of time that she was a House member, qualified her to run such an enormously complex and consequential organization.”
It’s not like no one could have seen that coming. Noem’s background and qualifications were never a secret, so why did she get nominated and confirmed in the first place? As hard as Tillis is trying to pin responsibility for Noem on anyone but Donald Trump, it’s actually just making the president look worse. If Trump is just blindly following the word of his advisors without a second thought, then that’s a problem. And Tillis voted for Noem, so if Tillis was just rubber-stamping the recommendations of the administration without doing his own due diligence, that’s a problem, too.
“I don’t criticize the president. People say, ‘You’re dodging criticizing the president,’” Tillis said Sunday. “Look, the president of the United States is like the CEO of any large, complex, multinational organization. He can’t be an expert at everything. The only thing he can do is get the right people to advise him.”
It’s true that the president can’t be an expert at everything, though Trump might like to think that he is. But it’s also true that the president should be smart enough to know when something is a terrible idea. He should be commanding enough to veto it, and decent enough to take the blame when he doesn’t. That’s what good leaders do.
It’s heartening, and rare, to see a Republican speak out against this administration, especially as forcefully as Tillis has on numerous occasions. But Tillis is also contributing to the problem by excusing and infantilizing the president. He’s still failing to hold him accountable. Isn’t that what got us here in the first place?
If the president wants to take credit for his administration’s successes, then he also has to accept blame for its mistakes. The reality is that while Trump may be getting bad advice, it’s his choice to surround himself with people who give him that advice, and it’s his choice to follow it. If the president isn’t responsible for the policies and people of his administration, then what is he responsible for? Tillis wants, at least publicly, to be both a Trump apologist and a Trump administration critic, but he should know by now that he can’t have it both ways. It only weakens his argument.
Deputy Opinion Editor Paige Masten is covering politics and the 2026 elections for The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer.
This story was originally published March 23, 2026 at 11:45 AM.
