Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) is backing several of President-elect Donald Trump’s key nominees including announcing support for former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi for Attorney General and Kash Patel for FBI director, his office confirmed to Breitbart News on Wednesday.
Tillis will also vote for former Fox News host Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense assuming the Senate Armed Services Committee reports his nomination favorably ahead of a floor vote next year.
“Senator Tillis has been focused on reviewing the nominees in his committees of jurisdiction and making sure they get fair hearings, and he is working on making sure Pam Bondi and Kash Patel get through the Senate Judiciary Committee and get confirmed on the floor,” Tillis spokesman Daniel Keylin told Breitbart News on Wednesday. “Senator Tillis trusts his Republican colleagues to ensure that all of President Trump’s nominees get a fair confirmation process, and any nominee that gets a favorable vote out of committee will get the Senator’s vote on the floor.”
This quote came in response to a question from Breitbart News about where Tillis stands on Hegseth’s nomination, and the fact that Tillis’s office is saying that he will vote for every Trump nominee that gets reported favorably out of committee is extremely important and a huge shot in the arm for Hegseth, as the Trump Pentagon pick faces an onslaught of attacks from the establishment media.
Tillis does not sit on the Armed Services Committee, but he is on the Judiciary Committee, which is why his office is saying that he will back Bondi and Patel specifically at this point in the process. Assuming Hegseth gets through a confirmation hearing and gets out of committee, then he will win Tillis’s vote on the floor per the senator’s spokesman. The same, the senator’s spokesman made clear, goes for every nominee as they make their ways through their various committees of jurisdiction. In addition to the Judiciary Committee, Tillis also sits on the Senate Finance Committee, the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, and the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.
The way the process works in the Senate is that after Trump sends his nominations to the chamber, they are referred to the proper committees of jurisdiction. Those committees then conduct research into the backgrounds and qualifications of the nominees, then eventually hold confirmation hearings where the nominees testify. Then the committee votes on whether to approve a nominee, thereby sending them directly to the U.S. Senate floor for a final confirmation vote, where at least 51 senators need to vote to confirm a nominee for final confirmation.
Establishment media outlets have been aggressively attacking several of Trump’s nominees, including Patel for the FBI and Hegseth for the Pentagon. NBC News on Tuesday claimed there were six GOP senators—without naming them—who were waffling on Hegseth’s nomination. Keylin, Tillis’s spokesman, told Breitbart News in no uncertain terms that Tillis is not one of them. It is unclear whether the NBC News report is actually correct and, if so, who the alleged six senators are.
Tillis is up for reelection in 2026 in North Carolina.
