Thrown under the bus by Thom Tillis

I hate to keep beating up on Thom Tillis.

Well, that’s not true. Nobody deserves to be called out and humiliated more than Tillis. He’s a guy who has a moral compass but lacks the integrity to follow it. He sometimes wants to do what’s right, but just can’t quite get there.

Thom Tillis knows that Pete Hegseth is not qualified to serve as Secretary of Defense. The guy has zero experience running a major organization. The military has more than 2 million service members and another 780,00 civilian employees. It also has budget of about $850 billion.

Hegseth is plagued with credible accusations of sexual abuse and drunken behavior. He admitted to paying $50,000 to a woman who accused him of rape. While he denies the charge, the San Francisco police sent the allegations to the district attorney’s office, but the DA declined to press charges.

The incident happened during Hegseth’s divorce from his second wife. She filed for divorce when she found out Hegseth fathered a child with one of his Fox News colleagues.

Hegseth says the accusations are all part of a smear campaign. He admits to occasionally drinking too much but says he will stop drinking when he becomes secretary of defense. If somebody tells you they have to stop drinking to do a job, they probably should have stopped a long time ago.

Tillis knows that Hegseth has no business anywhere near the defense department, so he tried to tank his nomination. The Wall Street Journal reports that Tillis told Hegseth’s former sister-in-law that if she would sign a statement testifying that Hegseth had a drinking problem and was abusive toward his second wife, then she would likely persuade Tillis and other senators to vote against Hegseth. She followed his advice, assuming that Tillis was an honest broker.

Unfortunately for her, he’s Thom Tillis. The North Carolina Senator had underestimated the craven nature of his Republican colleagues. Neither vile behavior nor incompetence would stand in the way of giving Trump the nominee he wanted. Tillis made a political calculation that he didn’t want to be the vote that sank Hegseth so he promptly and unapologetically threw Hegseth’s sister-in-law under the bus. He left her exposed to attacks from Hegseth and the right, but without the satisfaction of knowing she prevented an unqualified, misogynistic, drunken lout from leading our armed forces.

With the Wall Street Journal article, Tillis has a new problem. Team Trump knows that he was trying to undermine their nominee. Had one more Republican signed on to oppose Hegseth, he probably would have sunk Hegseth. Instead, Tillis lacked the fortitude to do what’s right because he’s a moral coward.

Trump is a guy who respects power, not weakness. He knows Tillis cannot be trusted but that he can be bullied. Expect Tillis to be Trump’s whipping boy for the rest of his term.

Nobody should ever believe anything Thom Tillis says again.