WASHINGTON — Sen. Thom Tillis said that if the executive branch keeps “threatening people in primaries” until Senate independence is gone, “we will have a sort of dictator king if we’re not careful.”
The North Carolina Republican said it at the end of a 60 Minutes interview with Ross Douthat, in a transcript posted by CBS News. Douthat asked what he was worried about after Tillis, in his book, wrote about the risks of authoritarianism. They were beside a plaque honoring law enforcement officers who responded at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The executive branch, with its outsized influence, threatening people in primaries, basically degrading their independence or eliminating it all together, then we become a one-institution country, which is exactly what we fought a Revolutionary War over. I mean, we will have a sort of dictator king if we’re not careful.
He did not name a person in that sentence. He described primary threats, lost independence, and one institution. He said he wants “checks and balances” and “all three branches to have their individual role and continue to check power as they have for 250 years.” He said it is “hard for the American people to understand how quickly we can lose it all.”
The plaque is a Senate action he took with Sen. Jeff Merkley. Merkley’s office said the two secured unanimous passage of a resolution directing the Architect of the Capitol to display, in the Senate wing, the plaque required by section 214 of division I of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022, Public Law 117-103, until it can go on the western front. The Congressional Record prints Tillis saying the officers answered “one of the most significant stress tests for this institution since it was founded.” CBS says he hopes the plaque will be a warning “even if the current president seems unchastened.” That last clause is the network’s.
His own exit is on a different page. On June 29, 2025, he said he would not seek reelection, citing time with his family and “the pure freedom to call the balls and strikes as I see fit.” The statement does not mention a primary. CBS says he announced the retirement after President Donald Trump threatened a primary challenger, following Tillis’s opposition to the One Big Beautiful Bill, and quotes Trump calling him “a talker and complainer, not a doer.” Those are the interview’s account. They are not in the retirement statement.
Douthat raised what the transcript calls Trump’s “W-T-F moments,” including “threatening to seize Greenland” and “Easter day musings about annihilating Iran.” Tillis said he would like the president “surrounded with people who would finally say, ‘Mr. President, if you do that, I’m walking out this door.’” Asked if the responsibility was the president’s, he cited Harry Truman: “The buck stops here.” He said, “I get that.”
He used the primary point earlier, on confirmation politics. Asked why private reservations among Republican senators had not become votes, he said some “do not want to bear the weight of the president,” and that a senator up for reelection can be targeted. That answer is about votes. The dictator line is about the institution.
The dictator sentence is one answer, beside a plaque the Senate directed the Architect to hang. It is about primary threats and a chamber he says can be reduced to one institution. It is not a description of a military order, and it is not the sentence in which he talks about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.