- Hello, I'm David Crabtree.

Coming up, a candid conversation with one of Washington's decision makers, United States Senator Tom Tillis, from the path that brought him into public service to the battle shaping policy today.

We'll take a look at the choices, challenges, and future of his career throughout North Carolina and the Capitol.

That's next.

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(upbeat music) ♪ - We're here in Washington with Senator Tom Tillis.

Senator, good to see you, sir.

- Always good to see you, Dave.

- Here we are to talk about 12 years in office, which I want to do, but we're here taping on the 23rd of March.

There is a lot going on in this city right now.

So let's talk about some of what's at hand.

TSA, the votes for the new Director of Homeland Security is probably going to happen on this evening tonight.

So let's talk about that first.

How do you see that going?

- It'll go fine.

It'll be mainly shirts and skins.

I think probably Fetterman will vote for him.

I'm hearing about one other member on the Democratic side.

He'll sweep the Republican side.

Mark Wayne's been a great addition to the Senate conference.

He's plain spoken.

I appreciate him because he's a little bit like me in that he doesn't leave anything on the table.

If he's got something on his mind, he's going to speak it, but he's also a man of his word.

And I'll give you the best example of that, Lumbee recognition.

I don't think I could have gotten it done without Mark Wayne.

He's an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, or of the Cherokee Nation, I should say, from Oklahoma.

He was getting hammered supporting Lumbee recognition.

And he looked at me and said, "I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do."

And it turns out he was even doing that in the House when nobody was asking him to.

He voted for Lumbee recognition against a very powerful lobby.

And that says a lot about him being a man of principle.

I think he's going to do a good job at Homeland Security.

- Well, here we are, government shutdown, partial shutdown continues.

There doesn't seem to be an end in sight.

What am I missing?

- Well, I'm not really sure.

I felt like this week may be the week.

I don't know if the president's decision to put ICE people in airports is going to be a help or a hindrance to getting that done.

I think the president's doing it for the right reasons.

He's trying to help airports that are clogged up, as you and I have talked about.

North Carolina's in pretty good shape.

But Democrats may use that as a wedge to say now he's sending ICE to airports when all he's really trying to do is alleviate the problems there when we have some TSA folks not showing up.

For good reasons, by the way.

I don't begrudge them.

My goodness, they went through more than 40 days of a shutdown last year without a paycheck.

Now they're shut down again.

They've got to make ends meet.

They've got to pay for childcare.

They've got to do a lot of things.

And Democrats need to get on board.

Republicans are prepared to vote to fund TSA, Coast Guard, FEMA.

And the reality is in last year's one big, beautiful bill, ICE was funded enough to continue for another two years.

So while the Democrats are saying this is about defunding ICE, it's not going to defund them.

So they should get to real reforms that make sense.

I've seen some of them in the wake of the Minneapolis disasters.

We should just get to the table, negotiate this and move on.

We're not doing our jobs when we're not funding the government.

- When you came 12 years ago, were there fights like this?

- Yeah, but I think what happens, just think about 12 years ago, Dave.

I mean, you and I were a lot younger.

(Dave laughs) - Yes.

But just think about the amplification of media now.

We didn't have all the talking heads even 12 years ago that we have today and the paid influencers and the expanded reach of social media platforms, the exquisite level of capability in targeting people and fomenting discord.

So it probably, the only reason it didn't look the same way then is there are so many ways to portray what's going on in Washington now that even a dozen years ago, we're very different.

- And still at the same time, you've told me this over the years as well as other members, a lot gets done on a daily basis that is bipartisan.

- 100%.

- And it's the key touchstone points that get all the publicity or the majority of it.

- Well, I should say a lot of us get things done on a daily basis.

Those of us who invest time in relationships, show a consistent respect for other members.

Sure, you get a lot of things done.

You get help on working with agencies, you get things passed through unanimous consent, you get bills added on to markups.

That's not the stuff that the press wants to focus on though because that's actually Congress at its best.

But fewer and fewer members are investing in those relationships and I think they're gonna live to regret it.

When some members get into the majority, they forget what it's like to be in the minority and they don't behave in a way that exhibits the reality that someday their karma is a real thing.

And you create your karma by your behavior every day, the way you engage people, your professionalism, your respect for the rules, and those who don't, they end up living it and then they're sitting there crying over they're treating me mean.

I'm saying, man, look back a couple of years.

- Not too long ago, when Kristi Noem was still the Director of Homeland Security, you really took her to task.

And I'm curious what the feedback was that you heard from constituents when you held her feet to the fire that day.

- Well, I'll tell you, the feedback that I heard from Western North Carolina was thank you.

Thank you for making it very clear that FEMA was failing in North Carolina and Kristi Noem was responsible for it.

I heard a lot of that.

I heard a lot of people just saying, thank you for just calling out what were clear mistakes in Minneapolis.

Why anybody would take time trying to excuse themselves of horrible outcomes.

People getting shot in the face, shot in the back.

Just step back, guys.

And there were a number of people, Republicans, unaffiliateds, Democrats, of course, calling me up and saying, just thank you for being a voice of reason and holding her accountable for things that she was trying to excuse away before the corpses of those two people who were shot were even in the morgue.

And it was just not a way to do, it's not a way, I said in that hearing, I believe, because I was really mad.

I should back up and tell you why I really got mad.

- Why did you get mad?

- I got mad because an hour before that hearing, I heard after 30 days of submitting a letter that she, their department, thank you very much, sir, madam, or small child, for sending your request.

It was a very generic sort of letter.

We will not be providing you the detailed information on the operation in Charlotte, so-called Charlotte's Web.

There were about 500 encounters.

I wanted incident reports.

I didn't want the detailed information.

I wanted anything to be redacted that's necessary, but I wanted to know on an incident-by-incident basis, was the person illegally present?

Did they have a criminal record?

Did you detain them?

Did you use a warrant?

All the sorts of things that even the smallest law enforcement departments in North Carolina could give me within a week's notice.

And they said they weren't gonna give it to me, which told me all I needed to know about the efficacy and the success of Charlotte's Web, which is tracking right along the same lines as Minneapolis.

That's why I got angry.

I also got a little bit mad because she shot a dog and a goat during the lunch hour, but that's a different story.

- Well, wait, so she sent a form letter to you?

- Pretty much a form letter to a US senator.

- United States senator.

- Who had been waiting 30 days patiently, didn't criticize her or anything.

I said, I'm gonna give her until the hearing to do it.

An hour before the hearing, they do that.

That's too cute by half, because what were they gonna, are you gonna respond to my letter?

The response would have been, we actually responded, we developed a letter.

I think it was dated the 23rd, but given to us the morning of the hearing on the 3rd of March, the 23rd of February, I should say.

- You know, I am curious that as a sitting member of the United States Senate, when you heard the news of what had happened in Minneapolis, where were you?

How did that news get to you?

And was there a response like, what in the world is going on?

Even though you realize that there are issues that have to be dealt with.

- My immediate response is always pro-law enforcement.

So I'm immediately thinking, maybe there had to be the circumstances I needed to look at.

But in this digital world, again, even different than 12 years ago, you're not gonna do anything in public that doesn't have a 360 degree view of it most of the time.

And so what I heard before we got to the facts is Noem and Stephen Miller saying they were domestic terrorists.

And I just remember then, it is so odd because I've worked with law enforcement since I was on the park, not park and rec, but on the Cornelius Town Board.

I was on the 911 Law Enforcement Advisory Committee back in 2000.

And I have followed law enforcement for years.

In fact, Cornelius is one of the first small law enforcement agencies in North Carolina for us to get money to do CALEA certification, which is some of the highest levels of training you can give law enforcement.

So I've been following that very closely.

And to have the head of a law enforcement agency draw a conclusion on something before the corpses are even in the morgue without doing an incident report, without saying we'll be cooperating with local federal state officials to investigate that sort of stuff.

She just jumped right into a narrative that I think she thought was gonna excuse away those events.

And it was just disgusting failure of leadership, in my opinion.

- And the president deserves better.

- And then the public service campaign.

- Yeah.

- The commercials.

220 million dollars.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

I'm not bringing this up as an attack.

- No, it's just this what people, if anybody out there thinks that I was trying to be mean to Secretary Noem, I was trying to connect dots.

I was frustrated.

My frustration and my attention to Homeland Security started because of the failure of the Helene response.

So I had my staff do an exhaustive analysis of Trump administration one, and Florence and Matthew responses, and Trump administration two.

Couldn't be further apart.

So you already know you got a leadership problem.

And so I continued to go through this process of just concluding that she was out of her depth.

And she proved that again when she's head of a large complex law enforcement organization.

And she's drawing conclusions based on a communication she saw from Stephen Miller in the White House about domestic terrorism without any of the focus on the after action.

- You know, sort of a pivot, but it was part of the conversation that day.

I didn't know that you trained dogs.

- Well, I did.

What happened back in 1986 when my wife Susan agreed to marry me and move down to North Carolina, or not North Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia at the time, I had a sister insist on giving me a dog that came from a litter that was a combination of a pit bull and boxer mix.

Well, my wife was already a little bit nervous after having been born and raised in Boston about going to the South.

Now it's her redneck husband's gonna get this dog, and she's pregnant at this point.

I think she was convinced this dog was gonna eat her baby.

And I was convinced, and I'd trained dogs, get them to know five or 10 commands and keep them set.

I decided to get more serious about it.

So I've started more training.

My co - Mitch, Mitch, one of my dogs, I named after Mitch McConnell, and Theo I named after Teddy Roosevelt.

They're well-trained.

They know about 35 commands consistently, more consistently when I'm home.

But yeah, I've studied dogs, dog behavior, read a lot of books on it, gotten better over the years, which is why I conclude, even in her book, which I read a week before the hearing.

He has a story of, I'd always heard about the shooting the dog thing, but I didn't pay that much attention to it.

But as I read her book, she was talking about how this dog that was only 14 months old had embarrassed her on a hunt and ruined an opportunity for her friends from Tennessee, the last hunt, pheasant hunt of the season, and she was so angry that she takes the dog home and shoots it.

There's a lot of other stuff.

You should really read that chapter if nothing else.

Anybody that knows anything about dog training knows that you don't put a dog in that sort of setting until they're two, three years old.

I mean, a 14-month-old dog is an adolescent.

And then she, in the same hour that she decides to kill this poor dog, she decides also that that family goat that's been making her mad, she decided to shoot the goat too, in the same gravel pit.

And I saw that as, you know, you could, if dogs are property, if you want to kill your dog or kill your goat, I guess you can legally do that.

But to me, it spoke to her judgment.

It spoke to taking precipitous action without thinking through.

If she'd sat down and thought about that dog that the family called Cricket, then maybe she would have thought that it was her who put that dog in a situation before it was properly trained.

And it just jumped out at me that maybe she was putting people into ICE who were not properly trained.

And that's the parallel that I was trying to give.

She's making precipitous decisions, and then she's excusing them very, very quickly as well.

I saw a parallel there.

I don't know if everybody else did.

Read the book and draw your conclusions.

- Let's talk about you.

You served on Judiciary, Banking, Veterans Affairs, and which other committees?

- Finance.

- Finance.

You're a pragmatist, but at least a lot of people would call you a pragmatist.

Would you agree with that?

- Yeah, I'm also a conservative.

And right now the Republican Party is kind of unmoored somewhat from a conservative ideology, but has its roots.

I'm a conservative, but I believe in incremental conservatism.

I think if you move incrementally, what happens, and we saw this in North Carolina, when I first became Speaker, Dave, you were down there, I told everybody, "We're gonna move slowly, "but steadily in the direction of conservative policies."

Well, some people think we moved at a breakneck speed, but we didn't.

We did four pro-life bills over the course of the time that I was there.

My position on pro-life never came up in the race against Kay Hagan, because people accepted it.

We did it in increments that they could absorb and understand.

Second Amendment, my goodness, we did Castle Doctrine.

We did concealed carry expansion.

When I did my concealed carry class, the instructor, they didn't know who I was at the time.

They were gushing over the great changes that we made.

Again, nobody's ever painted me as an NRA Second Amendment nut, because we did them incrementally.

All those laws are still on the books.

Tax reform, reg reform, don't swing for the fences.

Get around the horn, win the baseball game.

That's really the philosophy I've had since I first started in politics, and it's one that I stand by, because it's worked.

I mean, I was just going through the documents this morning about the Carolina comeback that started when we took office in 2011.

We did incredible things.

We moved North Carolina from what was largely a left, more than just left of center state, with the policies that we repealed and the policies that we implemented were a right of center state, and if our legislators stay there, they can be in power for a long time, and if they don't, they're gonna be out of power in a short time.

- When you came into office in North Carolina in the General Assembly, House of Representatives, became speaker, you had a good chunk of political capital, too, because the Republicans had taken control for the first time in more than a century.

- That's right.

I was the second Republican speaker since the Civil War, and Phil Berger was the first Republican Senate leader since Reconstruction.

What we had to do, and I'm actually glad that I did not get a super majority.

If you remember back in 2010, Phil and the Senate got a super majority.

I was four votes, I think, short, and I'm glad, because that prevented me from having to, I got to manage the dynamic of what's intuitively going to happen.

People are gonna overreach.

They think this is our moment.

We have a mandate, reach, go too quickly.

So to be fair, I think I was able to manage people better by not having a super majority, and I was also able to get the House priorities more consistently those first two years, because Phil Berger and the Senate knew that if I had a veto override, I needed to get Democrat support, and so it was great collaboration with some of the guys in the State House at the time.

- I remember when you had the veto override, I guess on the budget?

- Yeah.

- Was that the big -- - That was the first one.

- Yeah.

- You know, I tell legislative leaders all the time when I see them at various conferences, speakers and Senate leaders, is you go around and see how many state legislatures would have overridden a Democrat governor with Democrat votes.

This was in our rookie season.

We did that nine times against Governor Perdue, and so when Tim Moore would joke with me about all of his veto overrides, I'd say, "Yeah, do it when you don't have a super majority."

That's when you've impressed me.

- Okay, so you bring that experience here.

- Yeah.

- Now, you're not in the role of speaker, but you're coming in as North Carolina's junior senator at the time, and what did it feel like when you tried to bring that same pragmatic experience, and particularly as a business consultant to someone who advises CEOs on hiring and all the different things you had in your past?

Did you feel like you'd hit a wall, or were you able to make -- - [Tillis] No, cause what -- -- progress incrementally?

- Dave, the thing I did here was the thing I did when I got in the state legislature, when I beat John Rhodes, you know, the Civitas Legislator of the Year, 120 at that, 120.

- My gosh, I had forgotten about that.

- Least effective legislator.

When I came in, he was 120 out of 120 in effectiveness rating.

I beat him, everybody was looking at me kind of like I had leprosy, because he was Civitas Legislator of the Year that year.

I challenged him because he wasn't doing anything for us in the district, and so naturally I come in, everybody's thinking I'm a part of the, you know, you still had the Brubaker, Morgan, you know, that dual speakership thing they have with Black, so the caucus was in a shambles.

All I did was sit back for two years and listen.

I did a couple of bills, passed a bill on, for more National Guard-friendly stuff, but I just, I learned.

I figured out where the cafeteria was, the restrooms, everything else, and really tried to understand the function of the caucus, and then I ran for minority whip.

You may recall after my freshman term, became minority whip and ran the campaigns, but I spent that first two years listening a lot more than talking, and did the same thing here.

You know, learn the relationships, understand the committee work, figure out parliamentary procedure, which is similar but very different, make friends with the parliamentarian, get all that foundational stuff done, and we still, you know, we worked on things, but it was more like, who's at the tip of the spear and how can I help?

And then you build on that in the remaining time, and then, you know, then we ended up moving with some of the, I'm proud to have, over the course of the several years, been associated with things that are once, first ever, once in a generation, meaningful policy.

That was fun, but it all started by just shutting up and listening.

- You mentioned learning-- - Which is hard for me.

(laughing) - Learning where the restrooms were in the cafeteria.

One of the best kept secrets, I think, in Raleigh is the fact that the best BLT in Raleigh is at the House mess hall, what they call it, right?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, they're still serving those.

- It is, you know, I love that.

I still go down there.

You know, we started a tradition of where we fed everybody, all the staff and everybody at Christmas.

That was a suggestion of my chief of staff, and I got to know a lot of those folks down there in the grill, the cafeteria, I'm sure, a lot of 'em.

Not all of 'em, 'cause I ran into a few that I remembered, still remembered me, but it's good food down there, it's cheap, too.

- One more thing on legislature, legislative news out of Raleigh.

Are you in touch with, or is Speaker Hall in touch with you at times?

- We talk, we talk at times.

In fact, I called Destin, I think, last week or week before last, check in on him, see how the conference is doing.

I wanna get down there and meet with them and help them.

We've got a negative environment going into this election, and the House members, there are House members there that I wanna help make sure that they have the resources and they have my help to the extent they need it to get reelected.

- Do you think, and of course, no one knows, you don't have a crystal ball here, but do you think if you had been there as Speaker, we would have gone this long without a budget in North Carolina?

- No, no, I would not.

I'd have drawn the line.

This is absurd, and I know that most of this is being driven by Senator Berger, but this is irresponsible.

It's a horrible look, it's horrible for our brain.

Look, in 2011, we ended up having the shortest and most productive legislative session since the early '70s.

That's the standard that I wanted Republicans to set and to continue.

But we started drifting, my goodness, a few years ago, I think we started moving in almost year-round sessions.

And everybody, I would tell everybody, even in 2011, I said, "The good news is "you're gonna get the holiday off.

"The bad news is you're not gonna get "the week and the day before and the week and "the day after off because we're gonna "execute just the way we said we were going to when we asked people to give us the chance to lead."

But look, they're making a mistake, they're making a strategic mistake by doing the CR posture and by not getting a budget done.

Businesses need certainty.

One of the reasons why we've been booming for the last decade in North Carolina is we got the business policies to the right place, but businesses need certainty about budget and governmental priorities.

And a continuing resolution is a kick the can down the road and, in my opinion, a failure of leadership.

You gotta get your differences behind you and get it done.

And frankly, I do have to say, and objectively, I am a bit of a creature of the House, but a lot of this I have to lay right at Senator Berger's feet.

- Let's talk about these 12 years.

I remember the night you were elected when you defeated Kay Hagan, a tough, close race.

- No, it was a landslide, it was one and a half points.

Go ahead.

(laughing) - Like Lyndon Johnson, landslide Lyndon.

You'd be tight Tom on there, right?

- That's right.

- But I remember, one of the first things you said to the crowd that night was, I've been elected Senator to serve all the people of North Carolina.

Yes, you ran as a Republican, you defeated a Democrat.

Do you think you've lived into that the way you wanted to, the way you saw that vision that night?

- Yeah, I think so.

Look, you're never going to be able to satisfy the most extreme liberal progressive people in the state, because I am a conservative and I've been a consistent conservative.

I'm not gonna be able to identify some of the ultra-mega people right now, because for no other reason, some of them are embracing policies that are fundamentally not conservative.

They are things that the president wants to do, but I didn't join the Republican Party to have some president define what it was someday.

I joined a party that's defined by conservatism and conservative ideals.

But I think if you take a look at my record over time, I've satisfied, I think I've satisfied the majority, right and left of center.

I think in other instances, I've gone far right on some matters and I've gone to the left on other matters.

Respect for marriage may be one of those, but I stand by that because I think it represents the majority of the state of North Carolina.

Look, my opinion is if you can get anywhere around 55, 60% of the people saying that on one measure or another, you did what they wanted you to do, then you're probably representing the population well.

- You've served here in DC under President Obama.

- Trump one.

- President Trump.

- Biden.

- President Biden.

And now again, President Trump.

You've seen a lot.

- Yeah.

- Was there any president easier to work with than the other?

- Yeah, actually, President Trump, I like President Trump.

And I think the fact that he has not just completely shelled me with criticism like he has so many other people, is that there's a level of respect there, mutual respect.

So I absolutely, Obama was, he never even engaged.

It was like the Republican, I was a freshman Republican there.

I don't even know if he ever acknowledged me when I was in a room.

Nor did he acknowledge the American people, which is why he made me Speaker of the House, because he overreached.

He thought he had a mandate.

He went too far.

I knew he was going to, and here I am.

Biden, the problem that I have with Biden is that, I do believe, and in fact, I came across an op-ed that I never published about how the cabinet really needed to decide if the 25th Amendment was in play.

So his last year or so, he was not the man who started, he was certainly not the man who swore me in under Obama, and who I'd gotten to know at that point in time.

But the thing that, the problem I have with them is we're working on these bipartisan bills, and instead of respecting conservatives like me, who are willing to take some heat to get them done, the reason why I've never gone to a signing ceremony, except for the NDAA last year, because of the Lumbee recognition, 'cause you never know what they're going to say when you're there, and you can't rebut it.

And I'll be dang, if in every case, Biden ended up running, instead of thanking members for coming together and doing something bipartisan, he made a patently partisan statement at every single one of them.

And Trump too, we're working together, we communicate.

- What do you like about him?

You think you really like him as a person?

- Yeah, well, he's quick with it, and I like to think, I don't know if I can match him, but I like to think that I could rattle off some one-liners pretty quickly.

And he's pretty fierce, and I think he showed a lot of that in his voice when he was shot, stood up, moved on.

I mean, there's an instinct in there that says a lot about somebody, about maybe having courage.

And so I like, I mean, I just like him personally.

I like the fact that it was the day before Easter, many years ago, that when he was, it was his first term.

Yeah, my mom was saying all kinds of things.

She loves Donald Trump, and saying all kinds of things.

"Oh, Mom, I'll give him a call, see if he'll talk to you."

It'd be therapy if he'd pick up the phone, talk to her for five minutes.

And then a few years later, I was down visiting an aunt and uncle that lived not far from the trailer park that I lived in when I was down in Jacksonville, Florida.

Same thing, they love him, called him, and talked.

I've been in the Capitol, I've been in the Oval Office with them, and had great discussions.

But even the night that he wanted me to change my vote on the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, that was not a pitched discussion.

In fact, some reporters said it was a tense discussion.

It really wasn't.

I mean, maybe I should have been tense.

I mean the president wanted me to reconsider my vote and go change it.

And I told him I wasn't gonna do it, but it didn't feel the least bit tense to me.

He's never raised his voice at me, never used profanity any more than he and I use it in casual conversation anyway, but not in an offensive way.

So I respect that.

- Are there ever times you hear him and you think, why are you, where did that come from?

- Oh yeah, yeah, all the time.

- Okay, is that, I mean, when the president speaks, there's a gravitas.

It's the president of the United States speaking.

It can change the markets, it can do anything.

- Well, that's it, Dave.

I don't think, I think in a way, I find it encouraging that he doesn't completely grasp the weight of his words in the world.

That maybe he's just another guy talking sometimes.

That I feel that way, viewing the world through the lens of the Republican lead for the Senate NATO Observer Group is one example that he has no idea how devastating it is to these world leaders to hear him talk about how maybe NATO is outmoded and no longer needed.

I don't think he really means that.

I'm damn sure if he's talking to any of the generals of the Pentagon, the last thing they wanna do is exit NATO.

But I don't think he means, I just don't think he understands the full weight of his words in any manner of subjects.

And more importantly, I think that it's another area why I keep coming back to criticizing some of the people around him.

Not all of them, not even most of them.

But some of them have an outsized influence over him and somebody should sit back there and say, Mr.

President, you gotta be careful with this.

- Have you tried to tell him that?

- I've tried to tell him he's got some lousy advisors and that they're giving him bad advice and it's the single greatest threat to him having a sound, enduring legacy.

And that's a job that I have as a Republican.

I don't have a job of helping the president be successful as a staff in the White House.

But I have a job as a Republican to make every Republican president as successful as they can possibly be.

Not because of the person, but because of the role.

- So here we are now, at war with Iran.

Is that something that keeps you up at night?

- I can't honestly say it keeps me up at night because I have honestly said the only thing that keeps me up at night is coffee.

But when I wake up in the morning, I do worry about the path forward.

I view the Middle East through the lens of what we saw in Afghanistan, what we saw in Iraq.

And it's a really complex part of the world.

And some of those regimes over there are houses of cards.

They could easily be undermined if this spread into a broader conflict.

And it has to a certain extent.

And I don't know who called the initial shots.

There was no question in my mind what the president did last year was wise, because they severely degraded, I think it's evidence now we didn't obliterate, but we did severely degrade their nuclear program.

And really I haven't had a problem up to this point, except for the fatalities in Iran are enormous now.

Less so from kinetic strikes from the United States and Israel from the brutality of the mullahs, but there's a horrendous humanitarian crisis going on over there.

And the fits and starts, are we here for a while, are we here for a week, are things that we need to get under wraps.

And we need to make sure, I hope and pray, that our best military advisors are calling the shots from this point forward.

And making sure that the president has people looking around corners.

You know, I wonder, we may never know, but I wonder if when they started the second assault, if they did the tabletop exercises and everybody knew up front that the first thing Iran was gonna, it should not have been a surprise to anybody that the Strait of Hormuz was gonna be shut down.

We're always talking about how Iran covers that and Yemen and the Houthis.

So it shouldn't have been a surprise.

And if it wasn't brought up to him, whoever should have should be fired.

And the same thing on striking military assets.

I said to begin with, you got 40,000 US military personnel dispersed throughout the Middle East.

And they all had to be assumed to be at risk.

And now we're seeing as the war plays out, Iran had a very clear, they had a very clear read on exactly where the assets were, exactly how to hurt some of these other Middle Eastern countries.

And they're playing it out.

I hope that the president's announcement today that he is speaking with people proves to be true.

The right people, no doubt that he's speaking to people in Iran.

The question is, are they people that can actually affect the cessation of hostilities and deescalation.

- In these 12 years, you've had highs, you've had lows.

What do you think is your either best, better or greatest achievement of what you wanted to do?

- Probably the, rather than citing any one bill, people can go look at the bills that I've worked on, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, Safer Communities Act, Respect for Marriage, number of other bills that we've worked on, the Banking Regulatory Reform Act, Settlement Bill 2155, big banking regulatory reform bill many years ago, the Jobs and Tax Cuts Act of 2017.

But I think probably the, less of an outcome and obviously Lumbee recognition, that was big because every senator since Jesse Helms has tried it and not gotten it done.

And the poor Lumbee have been trying for 130 years.

Getting it done was very rewarding and appropriate for the Lumbee nation.

I think I'd like to think, but I'll never know, is that I've established a reputation of trying to be fair and professional.

And that the members here would generally agree with that.

That's what I wanted to establish.

I just want to come up here and prove that I could operate here like I operated as a partner in a management consulting firm.

Be competent, get things done, and execute.

- You've got another eight months or so before you actually leave office.

Can you get, or is there, do you have a list of things you want to get done now that you think you will?

And will you be leaving with any major disappointments?

- I have 286 days left in the project budget.

And if you ask my staff today, if they say so, he's counting the days, they said no, he's made it very clear that he keeps track of how many days he has left to get things done.

And 286 days, if you view it in that light, is a lot of days.

Particularly if you can use the levers that every member has access to, but few of us are prepared to use them.

So I'm working right now, I've gotten in the middle, didn't start that way, in a big market structure bill that affects banking and crypto space.

I want to get that done.

We have a number of other things that we're working on.

I think this is the Congress that will get protect and serve done for law enforcement to increase penalties for harming federal law enforcement officials.

You know what I really like doing though?

I love finding members who have something that they've got a great idea, but they need help getting consensus, getting the votes, getting support for it.

I really love helping other people get things done more than being the point person.

'Cause with being the point person, you get the media attention and all the other stuff that I really hate about this job.

I like getting this stuff done.

And it doesn't matter to me, if anybody except for the other members and the stakeholders are aware I had anything to do with it.

I know, that's all that matters to me.

- Okay, you mentioned a few minutes ago, you're talking about President Biden when you were sworn in.

So that was in early January of 2013.

What was that moment like?

- Or 15, but-- - 15.

Excuse me, thank you for the correction.

- You know, it was, I don't see the weird, I don't know, sometimes I think I've got something wrong with me because I am, I just, and it's my philosophy too.

Nothing's ever as good or as bad as it seems.

To me, I was in the historic chamber getting sworn in, I'm ready to get to work.

I wasn't thinking about that moment, I almost never do.

I feel bad about it.

- No imposter syndrome.

- I just never, you know, I feel bad.

I'm a Catholic and I remember, as you know, as honored as I was to meet the Pope when he came here in the joint address, I just wasn't in awe.

I guess maybe I should have been, but, you know, to me, these are all just people playing roles, you know, but for a decision that you and I make or other people make, we'd be doing the same thing.

So I'm not a big hero.

- But you make incredibly important decisions.

- I'm not a hero worshiper.

- Okay, I got that, and I know you're not.

- I'm not even, I'm not even, and it's funny 'cause I've met some incredible performers, you know, artists that I just always love.

I'm just not, I'm not that kind of person.

- But it's a heady job.

I mean, for heaven's sakes, you're one of 100.

- Yeah.

- Okay, your vote matters.

You're in a majority now.

You've been in the minority.

You know about these things, and those votes impact lives.

- Yeah.

- Now, am I over-dramatizing that or?

- No, no, you're not at all.

I tell you, and then you see that in real terms, though, not just with the votes you take, but I go back to retrograde in Afghanistan.

I mean, my God, I've never cried or been more angry over a two-week, three-week period.

I mean, we are literally working with people on the ground in a WhatsApp network, trying to get families positioned at the gate to get onto planes and getting them to third countries, and working with veterans and people here that were just hysterical over their interpreter.

- It gets me choked up to talk about it, 'cause then, I mean, you were literally saving lives.

- Wow.

A lot of people never see the work that's done.

You just gave an example.

I mean, we knew that work was going on, but it obviously was very personal to you.

I know folks in your office, and you have cared deeply about people with immigration issues, people who are striving to become an American citizen.

I saw it happen firsthand.

Those are events that are the work of a United States Senator, but again, aren't the headlines, and they aren't political.

- My favorite part of the job.

Favorite part of the job.

Well, you know Kim, my state director.

You see the work they're doing down there?

It is what gives me the battery.

It gives me the recharge to do this part, because I don't really like, I think around here, people just get caught up so much in being a Senator, and I don't.

And so, unless I'm deep in legislating or working with my staff, I love my staff.

I've got one of the, I think I've got the best office in the U.S.

Senate.

Professionally run, excellent people.

But when you see the work that they do, I never say I, because my staff do the majority of the work.

I have only accomplished setting a standard for performance here that my staff live up to, and that my management hires good people, and then they do extraordinary work.

But it's the reason why I'd stayed here.

Honestly, if I hadn't had quite the experience of life-changing results and casework, and the staff, I wouldn't have run for a second term.

I wouldn't have had enough gas in the tank to deal with all the trappings of this job.

- Then talk to me about why and how you made the decision not to run again.

- Well, you know, I've never, I had decided not to run again in 2019, and it hadn't been for a conversation with a member of Congress who had retired that I had a lot of respect for.

I remember vividly, I was out at Duck.

I had just finished my family, I get one week of family vacation a year.

Everybody thinks Senate, maybe some Senate members take a lot more, I don't.

But we just got finished with a trip at Duck, about to go home, and I call this congressman, 'cause over the course of the week, I said, "I'm gonna retire."

I said, "You made a decision to retire.

"Tell me why I shouldn't."

And it was a good discussion, and it was one that made me decide to make another run at it.

I had already changed the ringtone on my phone to John Mellencamp, "I'm Not Runnin' Anymore."

(laughing) But I decided to run again.

I say that to say that-- - - What's the ringtone today?

- "S.O.B."

by Nathaniel Radcliffe and the Night Sweats.

It's a great song.

But it's the default.

I have custom ones, too.

But no, so I went into the process of what I call confirmatory due diligence.

After the president was elected, President Trump, for his second term back in December, I started going around.

It was amazing how well-kept secret it was, 'cause I told hundreds of people in fundraising, "I'm going through due diligence, folks."

I'm behaving as if I'm running, but I've gotta make a lot of decisions about can I raise the money?

Are the issue sets gonna be right?

Are the things that are important to me gonna be the things that the voters will embrace and re-elect me?

And I think it's one of the reasons why I've never lost a race, is I don't go into one thinking that maybe I'll win.

I go into a race being absolutely certain I'm gonna win.

And so I got in, and I'm doing the confirmatory due diligence.

I'm into the June time frame.

I'm already probably at a point where I'm not really sure if I'm gonna run.

And then this dusts up with the one big beautiful bill, and the president came up.

And I just told the president, the president, I mean, if I think about it, I've never read the truth social in total.

All I heard from my staff was they said I was grandstanding.

And this was after we'd had a discussion.

That was all he said.

And that was enough for me to say, "I don't play this game."

I'm just, "Give it to somebody else."

So I responded to the president, and now it's time to find a replacement.

But the reality of it, and it was a few months later, I talked to the president.

He said, "You know, I'm beginning to think "you were probably headed in that direction already."

I said, "I was, Mr.

President."

But I just wanted to be crisp, and that seemed to be a logical point of departure.

- By the way, when you ran in 2014, how much, how expensive was that race 12 years ago?

- We have established in the modern era of Senate electoral politics the rule of doubling.

In 2014, all in, it was about $120 million, 60% Democrat advantage.

In 2020, it was almost $300 million, same split, 60/40.

This race, Whatley, if he keeps it competitive, it'll be about a half a billion dollar race.

- A half a billion dollars.

To the casual observer, or maybe someone who thinks they're not as casually observing that, you're thinking, "Wait a minute, this is one Senate race, "a half billion dollars."

That seems to project the power that's in that seat.

It's just astronomical.

- Well, it's a majority maker.

North Carolina, Alaska, if you take a look at Alaska and Maine in this cycle, they're both up.

My buddy Dan Sullivan, who came in with me in '14, and one of my best friends in the Senate, Susan Collins, adjusted it, so if you take on a per capita basis, Susan Collins in North Carolina dollars will probably be about a three quarter of a billion dollar race.

The absolute dollars would be less than that because of media market and everything.

And the same thing for Alaska.

In fact, Alaska could potentially be a 200 million, 250 million dollar race in a state that has a population less than Mecklenburg County.

- So how much, when you're in the Senate, I remember a couple of, when I was working in Colorado, Senator telling me every day he had to raise X number of thousands of dollars.

- Well, I was on target for raising 50 million.

I raised, see, that's the all in, so that's independent expenditures, the party, everything that they throw at you.

In 2014, we raised 11 million dollars, and in 2020, we raised about 26 million dollars.

So we were on pace and we're expecting that our campaign would need to raise between 40 and 50 million dollars before all of the outside interest, and that would have meant that my Democratic opponent would have probably raised about 100 million dollars.

They're more effective at national fundraising using their conduit, Act Blue, to where it looks like you raise the money individually, but you just, you got it all, you got the zone flooded by Act Blue, but it was gonna be 50 million dollars.

- How does it feel not to have to worry about raising that money now?

- Like a little piece of heaven.

See, I don't like fundraising for myself.

I have no problem fundraising for another candidate that I believe in, and always used to love fundraising for non-profits, look forward to getting back in that again 'cause you can't really do it in the US.

- You wanna come to work at PBS North Carolina?

- (laughs) But I tell ya, I like not having the grind of fundraising, making the phone calls, doing all that stuff.

It's almost like a never-ending, not all of it, some of it, the great, the funny thing about fundraising is the people who give you the most significant contributions are the ones who ask the least of you, if at all.

I mean, I've had some mega donors who I've never had a, "Could you do this," or "This policy's important."

They're really looking after good, I think, elected officials, but the other ones, it's like a non-ending loop of that scene in Jerry Maguire, show me the money, you feel like you're on the other end and people are just constantly, and I could never do it.

I don't consider myself a particularly good fundraiser.

- All right, speaking of having you in as a fundraiser for PBS North Carolina, I was saying that in jest, but we do face that every day.

- Oh, I know.

- Every day.

So you voted to rescind federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Why did you believe that was the right vote?

- At that point, it was a part of a number of other rescissions, and the reality is if the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, if PBS and everybody else are intellectually honest with themselves, one of the ways they got where they got was they went a little bit too far on balance, or getting out of balance.

It's the same problem that we have with some of the relief programs.

I mean, in fact, I've told a buddy of mine who's in broadcasting in North Carolina, I said, "Look, the best way for you to stay "out of the political fray of Washington "is don't get into the political fray of Washington."

You guys come in, I've had, you know, you've been in my office before, I have people around the table, not the public broadcasting, but others going, you know, they're really hitting us.

I said, "Go take a look at your programming.

"You've decided to become a politician, "so expect to be treated like one."

Okay, if you go back to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS, and then I'll even include some of the international relief funds, people made mistakes by just not staying in that middle.

Stay within that 35-yard line of the, 35-yard lines of the ideological political spectrum.

And when you venture outside of that, make damn sure you have equal content.

Otherwise, you get a perception up here, and you're gonna be targeted for it.

PBS and Corporation for Public Broadcasting, I think, will come back, that they will see funding come over time.

But just get back to the mission of present the facts and don't draw conclusions.

And if people were intellectually honest with themselves, they did, and now they've lived to deal with it.

- One of my mantras is facts with context.

And always try, and I don't always succeed at this, I will admit, but try to bring some humility to the table.

And recognizing that maybe there's an area where we could do better, we could improve.

I mean, none of us are going to hit a threshold where we've got it, right?

And it's all done perfectly.

- Well, to be fair, you're gonna have a difficult time, in the polarizing world that we live in now, it's almost like the population has become disinterested, and they're not curious anymore.

All they wanna hear is something that confirms a bias that they already have.

And so, to be fair, maybe a part of that behavior was to at least resonate with some group of people.

Otherwise, you become less relevant.

But I think as we move out of this populist phase, organizations that report the news that are back to really being objective, even Walter Cronkite had his-- - Moments.

- Had his moments.

But for the most part, he tried to call balls and strikes and present information for other people to draw their conclusions.

The news organizations get back to that, the public ones, the funding will return.

But to be honest with you, there's probably some good, even if they're not willing to admit it publicly, some good that comes from the crunch in funding, because you become more efficient, you become more modern, you become more resilient.

And now, hopefully, these organizations have done that, and when the political winds shift a bit, they'll be better stewards of the taxpayer dollars when they get 'em.

- Just a couple of minutes left here.

A lot of people, I will say a lot, I hear it from several sources, what do you think Tom Tillis is going to do?

Well, he's gonna come back and run for governor.

- That's so funny.

- To those people, what do you say?

- You know what, back a few years ago, that was the rumor, every once in a while, I told my staff, I said, "I gotta go to Jones Street "and walk around so I can stoke those rumors about me running for governor."

I'm not gonna run for governor, my goodness.

I was Speaker of the House with the supermajority.

Phil Berger and I were able to govern the state for two years.

I told Pat, Pat McCrory, who's a buddy of mine, I said, you're kinda like the Queen of England there, buddy.

(laughing) We got the supermajorities.

He never liked that, he's a good friend of mine.

I mean, I cut up with him all the time, but I love this state.

Yeah, there is a side of me that would like to be in that executive role, but not have to be the governor.

I'd love to go through the state of North Carolina and make it more efficient, make it more responsive, make it less political, transform it, because it'll just mean that we can just maintain our pacing advantage with other states that are not.

But the reality is, it's a political position, and I don't plan to seek another political position.

I intend to invest more time with my family and more time in business.

I'm not quitting, I'm 65.

I'll probably work for another 10 years and maintain a pretty hectic schedule.

- I've got those 10 years on you already.

When you get there, you may say, I wanna go another 10 years.

Believe me, don't be surprised if that happens.

- So I'm talking about working at this pace, 50 hours a week, five, six days a week.

- [David] But that's all you know.

- I love it, and thankfully I've got a wife who loves me.

- And grandchildren.

- But I've gotta work life balance too.

Those grandbabies are gonna see me on the baseball fields, the soccer fields, they're gonna see me at their song recitals, everything else like they already do, just even more so.

- Senator Tom Tillis, you have given a lot of your life to public service.

No matter what political ilk people may find themselves in, we all owe you a debt of gratitude.

And we really appreciate your time today.

- Well, I appreciate it too, Dave.

We'll see each other in the afterlife.

- Thank you, sir, and thanks for joining us.

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