Tillis finally does what's right and Trump trolls him

Trump appointed another election denier to become US Attorney for the District of Columbia.

Thom Tillis finally followed through. He announced that he would oppose Ed Martin for US Attorney for the District of Columbia and held firm. Trump pulled Martin’s nomination. And then Trump trolled Tillis.

Ed Martin is a guy with no prosecutorial experience and a fondness for antisemites and white supremacists. Like a lot of Trump appointees, his only qualification was loyalty to Trump. He spread the Big Lie in the wake of the 2020 election and he ardently supported the January 6 insurrectionists. After Trump appointed him interim US Attorney, he fired the people who prosecuted the January 6 rioters and promised more retribution for Trump’s enemies.

To become US attorney permanently, Martin needed the approval of the majority of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In particular, he needed the support of all the Republicans on the committee, including Tillis. Tillis said that he could not vote for Martin because of his support for the January 6 defendants. He said that Congress needs to acknowledge the harm that was done that day. He stood firm and Trump pulled Martin’s nomination.

Just a couple of months ago, Tillis got burned for supporting Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense. He told Senate colleagues shortly before the vote that he would not support Hegseth, but caved under pressure from the White House. The Wall Street Journal wrote a damning blow-by-blow of Tillis’s collapse. Predictably, Hegseth has turned out to be comically inept, doing damage to our military and our reputation abroad.

Maybe Tillis wanted to make amends for the flip-flop on Hegseth. Maybe it was a political calculation that he needs to appeal more to moderates after unsuccessfully pandering to his base. Maybe he really is trying to find a backbone in a party full of Trump sycophants.

Who knows, but Trump was having none of it. He looked at Tillis’s reasoning for rejecting Martin and named Jeanine Pirro to replace Martin as interim US Attorney. Trump is trolling Tillis. If anybody was more adamantly pushing conspiracy theories than Martin in the wake of the 2020 election, it’s Pirro. She was cited in the Dominion Voting System lawsuit against Fox for spreading lies about the company’s voting machines, saying that the election was stolen. In the wake of the election, the network pulled her from the air because they were concerned about what gibberish she might spout.

Pirro is currently interim US Attorney with a 120-day term limit and we don’t know yet if Trump will nominate her to make the appointment permanent. If he does, Pirro will need to get the support of Tillis. He will once again be forced to either stand up for the principles he articulated or fold to pressure from Trump. Given the clowns that Trump is putting in charge of our government and the disastrous economic policies he’s imposing, Tillis could still emerge a hero if he’s just willing to find his moral compass instead of following his political ambition.