A Republican senator cast aside by Donald Trump is getting the last word with a scorched-earth tell-all about the “grifting sycophants and useful idiots” in the president’s inner circle.
North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis is airing out MAGA’s dirty laundry in a forthcoming memoir, How to Lose Friends and Antagonize Presidents, promising to unload on “how the sycophants surrounding President Trump, spineless Republican yes-men (and -women), and the weirdos of the MAGA world can’t get out of their own way,” according to a new summary from Harper Collins released Thursday.
Tillis, who brands Trump’s inner circle as “MAGATS” in the book, doesn’t hide who he’s targeting: The book’s cover prominently features White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and former DHS Secretary Kristi “ICE Barbie” Noem.
The retiring senator, 65, told MS NOW’s Morning Joe on Thursday that he is out to “expose” those who “are not giving the president honest advice and putting us in positions that we could avoid.”
“I’m talking about people who have never worked a day in business, who now have business strategy, decision-making roles, and they’re simply not looking around corners and taking care of this president,” he said.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump spent years attacking Tillis as insufficiently loyal before effectively forcing him into retirement, blasting the two-term senator as a “loser” and a “quitter.”
But now that he is not seeking re-election, Tillis appears to have little left to lose—and few reasons to hold back.
“Tillis takes us into a world of grifting sycophants and useful idiots in Trump 2.0,” the book’s summary states. “Fear, outsourced courage, and groupthink are hollowing out the party that Tillis spent much of his adult life building, and he’s not going to let it get dragged down without a fight.”
Despite casting himself as a rare Republican with a spine, Tillis caved to Trump earlier this week, when he backed Todd Blanche’s nomination for attorney general despite for weeks threatening to block Blanche’s path over the $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund and tax audit protection included in a deal between Trump and the DOJ.
Tillis said on Morning Joe that he is using the tell-all as an intervention of sorts, hoping it can help Republicans maintain their slim midterm majority.
“I want Republicans to win in November. That’s why I’m speaking out,” said Tillis. “ I’m here for the American people, not to score points with Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth or these other folks who I think are giving the president bad advice.”
Asked whether Trump “deserves blame as well,” Tillis sidestepped the question by comparing the president to a CEO who doesn’t have “expertise in all manner of an organization.”
