Sen. Thom Tillis says he sees a real chance that President Donald Trump will react recklessly if Republicans lose badly in the midterm elections. The North Carolina senator told 60 Minutes correspondent Ross Douthat that the concern comes from how the president acted before and after the January 6 Capitol riot.
The conversation ranged across the Republican Party, the president, and Tillis’s clashes with officials in the administration, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Douthat described the appearance as a familiar tightrope performance, noting that Tillis more often criticizes Trump’s advisers than the president himself. January 6 was an exception.
Tillis said the day broke a long record of peaceful transfers of power. “Look, this was the first time in the history of this country that we had not had a completely peaceful transfer of power on that day. And that was despicable,” he said. “The people that led the charge, the people that assaulted police officers, I wish they were still in prison and serving a very long sentence.”
A departing senator presses warnings about power and advisers
Douthat pointed out that Tillis’s disgust with January 6 still did not produce a vote to convict Trump in the impeachment trial that followed. The GOP’s midterm outlook has already grown darker, as Trump’s approval hits a new low while the party faces the prospect of losing the House. Even so, the senator said those events leave him uneasy about what could follow a rough November for the GOP.
Asked whether he worries about how the same president he has condemned over January 6 would react to a bad midterm night for Republicans, Tillis did not brush the question aside. “I think there’s a risk, I really do,” he answered. “It would be another political unforced error if we do that.” Tillis is not the only Republican warning that Trump could cost the party at the polls, as a former GOP rep pins the president for a potential midterm catastrophe.
Mediaite points out that the interview landed a year after Tillis said he would not run again in 2026, an announcement that came around the time he split with Trump over the One Big Beautiful Bill. He has since argued with the president and administration officials more than once. He has repeatedly urged Trump to fire Hegseth, and earlier this year, he criticized the president’s “anti-weaponization fund.” Trump answered by calling him a “weak and ineffective” lawmaker who was nothing but a “QUITTER.”
On Sunday, Tillis said he no longer believes the executive branch treats the legislative branch as a “peer.” He told Douthat, “We will have a sort of dictator king if we’re not careful.” He also singled out Hegseth and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, calling them “probably the poster children for men and women who should never have the authority they’ve been granted.”
Douthat said further criticism of that kind appears in a book by the 66-year-old senator that is set for release on Tuesday. Elsewhere in the interview, Douthat said the outcome of Trump’s second term rests with the president, not the people around him. Tillis answered by recalling that former President Harry Truman liked to say, “The buck stops here.” “It’s a good line,” Douthat said. “I get that. But Truman had great advisers,” Tillis told him.
Published: Oct 5, 2026 08:10 am