Republican Sen. Tillis calls his vote for Hegseth the 'biggest regret of my career' in a new book

Reported by ABC News. The paragraphs below are the opening of that article, reproduced word for word — not a summary, and not the whole piece.

Republican Sen_ Thom Tillis says in a new book that his deciding vote to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in January 2025 is the “biggest regret of my career.”

WASHINGTON -- Republican Sen. Thom Tillis says in a new book that his deciding vote to confirm Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in January 2025 is the “biggest regret of my career” and that he also “should’ve stopped” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from becoming Health and Human Services secretary in the early days of President Donald Trump’s second term.

In “How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents,” to be published Tuesday, the North Carolina senator defends his decision at the time to not be “the lone voice in the wilderness” preventing Trump’s nominees from confirmation. But he makes clear he was always skeptical about allegations about Hegseth’s turbulent management style, treatment of women and excessive drinking — all of which Hegseth denied.

“I know for a fact that there are others like me,” Tillis writes, “Republicans who agreed to go along with the early demands of the Trump team no matter how ridiculous they were, believing that failing to do so would mean the end of their political career, and who now see that things have gone way too far.”

He writes that he can count at least 30 of his GOP colleagues who have “expressed reservations (to put it mildly) about many of the president’s actions in private. Then, when the reporters showed up with their cameras and microphones, they’d have nothing but nice things to say.”

Tillis, who announced last year that he would not run for reelection in a “breaking point” with the president on his sweeping tax and spending cuts package, is publishing the book in his final months in office.