Media STILL telling on Thom Tillis

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Living your life bouncing around between on-background back-stabbing leaks to the drive-bys eventually catches up to you.  Thommy Boy loves the attention from CNN and the others and really appreciates the recognition as an eager cross-the-aisle dealmaker with Democrats.

Thommy screwed Trump on his border wall in the first term, and apparently tried to top that piece of work this term with behind-the-scenes sabotage of Pete Hegseth‘s nomination for Secretary of Defense.

Tillis flunkies have been spinning their massah’s shenanigans as little more than ‘due diligence.’ Really?  According to reports, Tillis was running around telling a different story to different audiences.    (Where I come from, that counts as deception and / or outright lying.)

Tillis and his team apparently put on such a show that Senate Republicans had no idea what his real intentions were until just hours before the final vote:

The night before Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) cast the fateful 50th “yes” vote to confirm Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, he approached the Senate’s new Republican leader and told him he was a “no.”

That Thursday night, Tillis told Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.), who was less than a month into his new role, that there were enough votes to defeat Hegseth. 

But Thune said that was Tillis’s problem—not his problem—and that Tillis could go to the White House and tell President Trump himself.

Over the next 24 hours, Tillis would go from no to the decisive yes vote for Trump’s controversial pick to lead the Pentagon. This story of how he flipped—a last-minute blitz by the president, vice president, the Republican whip team and Hegseth himself—shows how political and party pressure came to bear on a vulnerable senator facing re-election next year and on witnesses who came forward and received assurances of protection from Tillis, only to become collateral damage in the fight for a single vote. […]

Republicans mostly rallied behind Hegseth, who faced allegations of sexual assault, excessive drinking and financial mismanagement of two veterans nonprofits that he led, which he called anonymous smears. Tillis said publicly and to other lawmakers that he was on board. But unknown to Thune, Tillis had been conducting his own private investigation into Hegseth for weeks. 

In December, a mutual acquaintance had connected the senator with Kat Dugan, a North Carolina constituent who had supported Tillis in his Senate campaigns and had been an employee at Concerned Veterans for America a decade ago, when the nonprofit was led by Hegseth. She also is an Army veteran and served as a defense contractor. […]

Okay.  First Red Flag:  Hegseth put himself out there as a potential threat to defense contractors suckling at the Pentagon’s teat.  Dugan was, apparently, employed by a defense contractor.

MORE:

[…] Tillis told Dugan he was doing his due diligence in his role as a U.S. senator, and wanted to understand if Hegseth was qualified to lead the Pentagon, Dugan recalled to The Wall Street Journal.She told Tillis she had witnessed excessive drinking and other concerning behavior by Hegseth and believed he was unfit and unqualified, in her professional and personal opinion. She said Tillis agreed that what she had shared with him was compelling and warranted further investigation. He asked if she could get other people to come forward. […]

Tillis appears to have bought her spin hook, line, and sinker.  Before doing all this sucking shucking-and-jiving, Tillis should have perhaps spoken with the folks at the conservative Washington Beacon:

A former Concerned Veterans for America (CVA) employee is privately helping Senate Democrats solicit hostile testimony about her former boss, Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to be the country’s next defense secretary.

The former employee, Kat Dugan, worked at CVA for eight months while Hegseth served as CEO of the organization, and has sent messages to former CVA colleagues urging them to contact the Senate Armed Services Committee and assuring them they can do so anonymously. She has also provided closed-door testimony to the committee, according to correspondence obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. […]

Okay, second red flag.  She was out there “helping Democrats solicit hostile testimony about her former boss”?

SO, tell me again WHY our allegedly Republican senior senator is out there giving what appears to be a Democrat operative the time of day?

MORE:

[…] Dugan, formerly Kathleen Volandt, received a poor performance review in 2014 when she was serving as CVA’s North Carolina state director. Shortly thereafter, she filed for short-term disability, then long-term disability, and ultimately tendered her resignation in December 2014. Shawn Pattison, who served as CVA’s national field director at the time, told the Free Beacon that Dugan “consistently fell short of performance expectations.” A copy of her performance review reviewed by the Free Beacon substantiates that assessment.

Pattison offered praise for Hegseth’s leadership abilities, noting that he “transformed CVA from a pilot project into the organization that delivered on [Veterans Affairs] reforms.” He added: “His leadership was what pushed us” and made the job “one of the most fulfilling professional experiences I’ve had so far.”

The text messages and documents shed new light on the high-profile opposition campaign against Hegseth, which has played out in the press and comes largely from anonymous sources. The news could also bolster claims from Hegseth and his allies, who have blamed the negative publicity on “disgruntled employees” waging a “manufactured media takedown.”

In fact, this is not the first time Dugan has been linked to unflattering media reports about Hegseth. In March 2018, when Hegseth was floated as a possible nominee to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs, his lawyer sent Dugan a cease-and-desist letter accusing her of making “false and defamatory statements” about Hegseth to J. Arthur Bloom, a writer who has contributed to The Spectator, “intended to damage Mr. Hegseth’s reputation and his potential future employment prospects.”[…]

So, we apparently have an established pattern with this woman.  And Tillis was ready to bet the farm with her.

Speaking of patterns, Thom Tillis has clearly established one with Donald Trump.  During Trump 1.0, Tillis took to the airwaves to attack the whole idea of building a wall at the southern border.  Somehow, Tillis got a Trump endorsement to help squeak by in a tough 2020 reelection bid.

Here we are in 2025.  We’re already seeing signs of treachery toward Trump by Tillis.  Will there be a Trump endorsement of Tillis in 2026?

I talked with a source wise in the ways of DC about this particular question.  Here’s what they told me:

“Trump needs to see that a Republican majority in the Senate is threatened by the continued presence of Thom Tillis.  Tillis may slip past angry conservatives in the primary, but it’s unlikely he gets past Democrat nominee Roy Cooper. Tillis has never knocked heads in an election with the likes of Cooper.  North Carolina Republicans have yet to stop Cooper.  He’s got a world-class team around him that will eat Shumaker for lunch.

Trump has a few options. He can go ahead and throw a well-financed primary challenger at Tillis and rid himself of this problem once and for all.  He could lean on Tillis to retire and go spend more time with the family, and then replace him.  Or he can risk a lot of political capital to push Tillis through the primary and general, and likely end up with Senator Roy Cooper anyway.”