NC's Thom Tillis says Senate will vet Matt Gaetz for AG, but won't commit his vote

WASHINGTON — The reaction on the Hill to President-elect Donald Trump announcing that he nominated former Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Republican from Florida, to become the next attorney general came swiftly.

House Republicans reportedly let out an audible gasp at their meeting at a nearby Hyatt.

One couldn’t stop laughing when reporters asked about the news.

And then came relief from many that one of Congress’ most divisive Republicans resigned.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis told McClatchy on Thursday that nothing surprises him in politics anymore.

“Nothing,” he reiterated. “And I’m OK with this, but at the end of the day, we have a process, and we’ll just have to run through it.”

Gaetz has made a name for himself in this session of Congress, first for blocking the nomination of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, then helping cause gridlock by holding McCarthy’s slim majority over his head as McCarthy tried to make key decisions, finally leading to McCarthy being ousted as speaker.

Gaetz is a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, originally started by former North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows, who would go on to serve as Trump’s chief of staff. Gaetz served in the caucus alongside North Carolina lawmakers like Rep. Dan Bishop, former Rep. Madison Cawthorn and Sen. Ted Budd.

Budd has stayed publicly quiet on Trump’s nomination of Gaetz, but both Bishop and Cawthorn celebrated.

“Best of All,” Bishop posted about the news, with nine exclamation points.

“My friend (Matt Gaetz) will be the greatest Attorney General in American History,” Cawthorn posted.

But first, Gaetz has to make it through a Senate confirmation, and many question whether that’s possible with how many people Gaetz has antagonized and an investigation he faced over accusations of illicit drug use and sexual misconduct.

Will Gaetz be confirmed as AG?

South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsey Graham told Republicans, on Fox News, “Give Matt a chance.”

Some weren’t quite so friendly.

Initial reports about Tillis’ reaction Wednesday noted his comment that “it will make for a popcorn-eating confirmation.”

On Wednesday evening, Rep. Wiley Nickel, who plans to challenge Tillis in the 2026 election, called the senator out on social media for saying he would give Gaetz “an honest look.”

“Hey Thom Tillis, I hope you take an ‘honest look’ in the mirror if you think Matt Gaetz is qualified to be attorney general,” Nickel wrote.

Nickel was responding to one of several posts on social media that reporters wrote about comments Tillis made in reaction to Gaetz’s appointment.

On Thursday morning, Tillis, who had just left a hearing that didn’t go his way, explained exactly what he was trying to convey.

“The president deserves to put forth a nominee,” Tillis said, emphatically. “The president has an obligation to make sure that the nominee is going to pass vetting and have the votes on the floor. I will consider Matt Gaetz, like I will anybody else, but if they don’t do the homework, don’t be surprised if they fail. Maybe they’ve already done that work. That’s how the process works.”

Ethics committee report

Within hours of Trump’s announcement Wednesday, Gaetz resigned from the U.S. House, reportedly two days before the House Ethics Committee was set to vote on whether to release a report regarding its findings from an investigation into Gaetz.

Rep. Deborah Ross, a Democrat from Wake County, serves on the ethics committee but said Thursday she could not comment on Gaetz or the investigation.

A reporter asked Tillis on Thursday if he wants the report to come out on Gaetz, but he said his feelings on that are irrelevant because he suspects it will be released, either during the vetting process or elsewhere.

“I’m almost certain that it will come out if he gets sent forth,” Tillis said.

Tillis and Gaetz’s history

Tillis also acknowledged that he and Gaetz have a history of bickering on social media. Some of that stems from an investigation into former Sen. Richard Burr, a Republican from Winston-Salem, who was accused of insider trading during the COVID-19 pandemic, an allegation that was later cleared through investigations.

Gaetz publicly declared Burr guilty, said he needed to be removed as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee and called Tillis’ reaction to the allegations “low-energy.”

“I don’t care about that,” Tillis said. “I spar with these folks, and I still work with them. What I care about is a defensible résumé and a really clean vetting. Produce that and he has a chance. Don’t and he doesn’t.”

The situation with Tillis and Burr wasn’t the last time Gaetz’s actions put North Carolina in national headlines.

At the beginning of this session, Rep. Richard Hudson, a Republican from Southern Pines and chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, was credited with saving Gaetz from the wrath of Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican from Alabama. Republicans, at the time, believed McCarthy had enough support in the 14th round of voting to make him speaker, but at the last second Gaetz voted against him. Rogers stormed up to Gaetz on the House floor and reached toward him when Hudson grabbed him by the face and yanked him away.

Gaetz is also the reason Rep. Patrick McHenry was named the nation’s first interim House speaker after Gaetz led a coup against McCarthy and worked with Democrats to remove him. McHenry was listed as McCarthy’s successor under a post-9/11 rule that required McCarthy to have a succession plan in case anything were to prevent him from serving. No one anticipated that that list would be used because of internal power struggles. When McHenry was given the gavel after his close friend was ousted, he slammed it into the dais to adjourn the House in what many joked was the “gavel slam heard around the world.”

Gaetz also weighed into North Carolina’s 2024 Republican primary after former Rep. Mark Walker claimed Gaetz had endorsed him for Congress instead of Trump-endorsed — and later elected — Addison McDowell. Gaetz told McClatchy that Walker lied. Gaetz was one of several people who accused candidates in the 6th Congressional District race of faking endorsements, including those from House Speaker Mike Johnson and NASCAR legend Richard Petty.

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