🔥"Hot Seat Pete” Edition

Hegseth’s feeling the heat. Again.

Senator Thom Tillis has entered his "honest but retiring" phase—the political version of a midlife crisis where regret flows freely and accountability is still gently deflected. In his first big interview since announcing he won’t seek re-election, Tillis admitted that, yes, maybe handing the Pentagon over to Pete Hegseth—a former Fox News personality with a passion for flags, beer, and bro-code leadership—wasn’t his finest hour.

Hegseth, it turns out, is “out of his depth,” which Tillis says only became obvious after Hegseth started treating U.S. defense policy like an episode of Duck Dynasty. Case in point: authorizing a weapons shipment pause to Ukraine without bothering to tell the White House. Tillis called it “amateurish,” which is the Senate’s polite term for “we hired a guy who thinks command structure is a brand of whiskey.”

Of course, back when it mattered, Tillis tried to get Hegseth’s nomination pulled over abuse allegations—but then Trump threatened to primary him, and suddenly Hegseth was Secretary of Defense material. Now that Tillis is retiring, he’s found the courage to say what we all suspected: “Whoops.”

But wait, there's more. Tillis also took a mild jab at RFK Jr., currently serving as Health Secretary and presumably distributing herbal supplements at Cabinet meetings. Apparently, Tillis supported Kennedy’s nomination because Sen. Bill Cassidy said “let’s see how it goes,” which is also how people decide whether to microwave seafood in the office kitchen.